relation to her pleasure in the morning scene, but was rather regretting
the absence of a lady with whom they had travelled from Niagara, and to
whom she imagined she would that moment like to say something in praise
of the prospect. This lady was a Mrs. Basil March of Boston; and though
it was her wedding journey and her husband's presence ought to have
absorbed her, she and Miss Kitty had sworn a sisterhood, and were
pledged to see each other before long at Mrs. March's home in Boston. In
her absence, now, Kitty thought what a very charming person she was, and
wondered if all Boston people were really like her, so easy and friendly
and hearty. In her letter she had told the girls to tell her Uncle Jack
that he had not rated Boston people a bit too high, if she were to judge
from Mr. and Mrs. March, and that she was sure they would help her as
far as they could to carry out his instructions when she got to Boston.

These instructions were such as might seem preposterous if no more
particular statement in regard to her Uncle Jack were made, but will be
imaginable enough, I hope, when he is a little described. The Ellisons
were a West Virginia family who had wandered up into a corner of
Northwestern New York, because Dr. Ellison (unceremoniously known to
Kitty as Uncle Jack) was too much an abolitionist to live in a
slaveholding State with safety to himself or comfort to his neighbors.
Here his family of three boys and two girls had grown up, and hither in
time had come Kitty, the only child of his youngest brother, who had
gone first to Illinois and thence, from the pretty constant adversity of
a country editor, to Kansas, where he joined the Free State party and
fell in one of the border feuds. Her mother had died soon after, find
Dr. Ellison's heart bowed itself tenderly over the orphan. She was
something not only dear, but sacred to him as the child of a martyr to
the highest cause on earth; and the love of the whole family encompassed
her. One of the boys had brought her from Kansas when she was yet very