I was early in bed, and rising betimes went down to breakfast, which was
a brief meal, this being, as Mr. Wholesome said to me, the short end of
the day. I should here explain that Mr. Wholesome was a junior partner
in the house in which I was to learn the business before going to China.
Thus he was the greatest person by far in our little household, although
on this he did not presume, but seemed to me greatly moved toward jest
and merriment, and to sway to and fro between gayety and sadness, or at
the least gravity, but more toward the latter when Mistress White was
near, she seeming always to be a checking conscience to his mirth.

On this morning, as often after, he desired me to walk with him to our
place of business, of which I was most glad, as I felt shy and lonely.
Walking down Arch street, I was amazed at its cleanliness, and surprised
at the many trees and the unfamiliar figures in Quaker dresses walking
leisurely. But what seemed to me most curious of all were the plain
square meeting-houses of the Friends, looking like the toy houses of
children. I was more painfully impressed by the appearance of the
graves, one so like another, without mark or number, or anything in the
disposition of them to indicate the strength of those ties of kinship
and affection which death had severed. Yet I grew to like this quiet
highway, and when years after I was in Amsterdam the resemblance of its
streets to those of the Friends here at home overcame me with a crowd of
swift-rushing memories. As I walked down of a morning to my work, I
often stopped as I crossed Fifth street to admire the arch of lindens
that barred the view to the westward, or to gaze at the inscription on
the 'Prentices' Library, still plain to see, telling that the building
was erected in the eighth year of the Empire.

One morning Wholesome and I found open the iron grating of Christ Church
graveyard, and passing through its wall of red and black glazed brick,