metropolis, or from some remote ancestor. Before she was eleven years
old her mother had listened with some wonder and more apprehension to the
eager forecast of what this child intended to do when she became a woman,
and already shrank from a vision of Celia on a public platform, or the
leader of some metempsychosis club. Through her affections only was the
child manageable, but in opposition to her spirit her mother was
practically powerless. Indeed, this little sprout of the New Age always
spoke of her to Philip and to the Maitlands as "little mother."

The epithet seemed peculiarly tender to Philip, who had lost his father
before he was six years old, and he was more attracted to the timid and
gentle little widow than to his equable but more robust Aunt Eusebia,
Mrs. Maitland, his father's elder sister, whom Philip fancied not a bit
like his father except in sincerity, a quality common to the Maitlands
and Burnetts. Yet there was a family likeness between his aunt and a
portrait of his father, painted by a Boston artist of some celebrity,
which his mother, who survived her husband only three years, had saved
for her boy. His father was a farmer, but a man of considerable
cultivation, though not college-bred--his last request on his death-bed
was that Phil should be sent to college--a man who made experiments in
improving agriculture and the breed of cattle and horses, read papers now
and then on topics of social and political reform, and was the only
farmer in all the hill towns who had what might be called a library.

It was all scattered at the time of the winding up of the farm estate,
and the only jetsam that Philip inherited out of it was an annotated copy
of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, Young's Travels in France, a copy of
The Newcomes, and the first American edition of Childe Harold. Probably
these odd volumes had not been considered worth any considerable bid at
the auction. From his mother, who was fond of books, and had on more