conversation, I was the richer, partly for that I had lost in choosing
to consort with them, and partly for what I had gained. As having
nothing, yet possessing all things; as poor, yet making many rich--the
boast of St. Paul, the hope of St. Francis of Assisi! in those pithy
antitheses is the summa of my experience.

Eldest son, but third child, of my parents, I was born upon the 4th of
October, in the year 1700; and for that reason and another (to which I
shall shortly allude) was named Francis, after the great Champion of our
faith commemorated upon my birthday. The other reason was that, oddly
enough, my mother, before my birth, had dreamed of him so persistently
and with particulars so unvaried that she gave my father no option but
to change the settled habits of our family and bestow upon me the name,
which he despised, of a patriarch whom he underrated. Her dream,
repeated, she told me, with exact fidelity and at regularly recurring
periods, was that she could see St. Francis standing on a wide sea-shore
between sand-dunes and the flood of waters--standing alone there with an
apple in his hand, which he held lightly, as if weighing it. By and by,
said my mother, she saw three women come slowly over the sandhills from
different points, one from the south, one from the north, and one from
the west; but they converged as they drew near to St. Francis, joined
hands, and came directly to him. The midmost of the three was like a
young queen; she on the side nearest the sea was bold and meagre; the
third was lovely, but disfigured by a scar. When they were come before
St. Francis, after reverences, they knelt down on his right hand and his
left, and the queenly woman in front of him. To her, courteously, he
first offered the apple, but she laughingly refused it. She of the scar,
when it was held before her, covered her face with her hands and shrank
away; but the hardy woman craned her head forward and bit into the apple
while it was yet in the saint's hand. Then the young queen would have