frozen rigid by some great wrong or sin. We used to look with awe upon
the "still woman," and think of the demoniac of Scripture who had a
"dumb spirit."

One--I think I see him now, grim, gaunt, and ghastly, working his slow
way up to our door--used to gather herbs by the wayside and call himself
doctor. He was bearded like a he goat and used to counterfeit lameness,
yet, when he supposed himself alone, would travel on lustily as if
walking for a wager. At length, as if in punishment of his deceit, he
met with an accident in his rambles and became lame in earnest, hobbling
ever after with difficulty on his gnarled crutches. Another used to go
stooping, like Bunyan's pilgrim, under a pack made of an old bed-
sacking, stuffed out into most plethoric dimensions, tottering on a pair
of small, meagre legs, and peering out with his wild, hairy face from
under his burden like a big-bodied spider. That "man with the pack"
always inspired me with awe and reverence. Huge, almost sublime, in its
tense rotundity, the father of all packs, never laid aside and never
opened, what might there not be within it? With what flesh-creeping
curiosity I used to walk round about it at a safe distance, half
expecting to see its striped covering stirred by the motions of a
mysterious life, or that some evil monster would leap out of it, like
robbers from Ali Baba's jars or armed men from the Trojan horse!

There was another class of peripatetic philosophers--half pedler, half
mendicant--who were in the habit of visiting us. One we recollect, a
lame, unshaven, sinister-eyed, unwholesome fellow, with his basket of
old newspapers and pamphlets, and his tattered blue umbrella, serving
rather as a walking staff than as a protection from the rain. He told
us on one occasion, in answer to our inquiring into the cause of his
lameness, that when a young man he was employed on the farm of the chief