treatment of the poor fellow. But at first I couldn't realise that
the stuff was so bad. Their saying that he read all the books he
could get, and was writing every spare moment, gave me the idea that
he _must_ be some sort of literary genius in the germ, and I
listened on and on, expecting every moment that he was coming to
some passage with a little lift or life in it; and when he got to
the end, and hadn't come to it, I couldn't quite pull myself
together to say so. I had gone there so full of the wish to
recognise and encourage, that I couldn't turn about for the other
thing. Well! I shall know another time how to value a rural
neighbourhood report of the existence of a local poet. Usually there
is some hardheaded cynic in the community with native perception
enough to enlighten the rest as to the true value of the phenomenon;
but there seems to have been none here. I ought to have come sooner
to see him, and then I could have had a chance to go again and talk
soberly and kindly with him, and show him gently how much he had
mistaken himself. Oh, _get_ up!" By this time the mare had
lapsed again into her habitual absent-mindedness, and was limping
along the dark road with a tendency to come to a full stop, from
step to step. The remorse in the minister's soul was so keen that he
could not use her with the cruelty necessary to rouse her flagging
energies; as he held the reins he flapped his elbows up toward his
face, as if they were wings, and contrived to beat away a few of the
mosquitoes with them; Mrs. Sewell, in silent exasperation, fought
them from her with the bough which she had torn from an overhanging
birch-tree.

In the morning they returned to Boston, and Sewell's parish duties
began again; he was rather faithfuller and busier in these than he
might have been if he had not laid so much stress upon duties of all