When I was thirteen years old I went to visit my Uncle Cephas.
My grandmother would not have parted with me even for that
fortnight had she not actually been compelled to. It happened
that she was called to a meeting of the American Tract Society,
and it was her intention to pay a visit to her cousin, Royall
Eastman, after she had discharged the first and imperative duty
she owed the society. Mrs. Deacon Ranney was to have taken me
and provided for my temporal and spiritual wants during
grandmother's absence, but at the last moment the deacon came
down with one of his spells of quinsy, and no other alternative
remained but to pack me off to Nashua, where my Uncle Cephas
lived.

This involved considerable expense, for the stage fare was three
shillings each way: it came particularly hard on grandmother,
inasmuch as she had just paid her road tax and had not yet
received her semi-annual dividends on her Fitchburg Railway
stock. Indifferent, however, to every sense of extravagance and
to all other considerations except those of personal pride, I
rode away atop of the stage-coach, full of exultation. As we
rattled past the Waite house I waved my cap to Captivity and
indulged in the pleasing hope that she would be lonesome without
me. Much of the satisfaction of going away arises from the
thought that those you leave behind are likely to be wretchedly
miserable during your absence.

My Uncle Cephas lived in a house so very different from my
grandmother's that it took me some time to get used to the place.
Uncle Cephas was a lawyer, and his style of living was not at all
like grandmother's; he was to have been a minister, but at twelve