been known of their origin. The sharp eyes of all the spinsters had been
through every household in the village and neighborhood, and not a
suspicion fixed itself on any one. It was a dark night when they were
left; and it was probable that they had been brought from another town,
as the sound of wheels had been heard close to the door where they were
found, had stopped for a moment, then been heard again, and lost in the
distance.

How the good woman of the house took them in and kept them has been
briefly mentioned. At first nobody thought they would live a day, such
little absurd attempts at humanity did they seem. But the young doctor
came and the old doctor came, and the infants were laid in cotton-wool,
and the room heated up to keep them warm, and baby-teaspoonfuls of milk
given them, and after being kept alive in this way, like the young of
opossums and kangaroos, they came to a conclusion about which they did
not seem to have made up their thinking-pulps for some weeks, namely, to
go on trying to cross the sea of life by tugging at the four-and-twenty
oars which must be pulled day and night until the unknown shore is
reached, and the oars lie at rest under the folded hands.

As it was not very likely that the parents who left their offspring round
on doorsteps were of saintly life, they were not presented for baptism
like the children of church-members. Still, they must have names to be
known by, and Mrs. Hopkins was much exercised in the matter. Like many
New England parents, she had a decided taste for names that were
significant and sonorous. That which she had chosen for her oldest
child, the young poet, was either a remarkable prophecy, or it had
brought with it the endowments it promised. She had lost, or, in her own
more pictorial language, she had buried, a daughter to whom she had given
the names, at once of cheerful omen and melodious effect, Wealthy