together, he took me on his knee and kissed me. 'Which will you do,
Amelius,' he said; 'stay in England with your uncle and aunt? or come
with me all the way to America, and never go back to England again?
Take time to think of it.' I wanted no time to think of it; I said, 'Go
with you, papa.' He frightened me by bursting out crying; it was the
first time I had ever seen him in tears. I can understand it now. He
had been cut to the heart, and had borne it like a martyr; and his boy
was his one friend left. Well, by the end of the week we were on board
the ship; and there we met a benevolent gentleman, with a long gray
beard, who bade my father welcome, and presented me with a cake. In my
ignorance, I thought he was the captain. Nothing of the sort. He was
the first Socialist I had ever seen; and it was he who had persuaded my
father to leave England."

Mr. Hethcote's opinions of Socialists began to show themselves (a
little sourly) in Mr. Hethcote's smile. "And how did you get on with
this benevolent gentleman?" he asked. "After converting your father,
did he convert you--with the cake?"

Amelius smiled. "Do him justice, sir; he didn't trust to the cake. He
waited till we were in sight of the American land--and then he preached
me a little sermon, on our arrival, entirely for my own use."

"A sermon?" Mr. Hethcote repeated. "Very little religion in it, I
suspect."

"Very little indeed, sir," Amelius answered. "Only as much religion as
there is in the New Testament. I was not quite old enough to understand
him easily--so he wrote down his discourse on the fly-leaf of a
story-book I had with me, and gave it to me to read when I was tired of