The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Briery Creek.
• Chapter I.: The Philosopher At Home.
• Chapter II.: The Gentleman At Home.
• Chapter III.: Saturday Morning.
• Chapter IV.: Sunday Evening.
• Chapter V.: Introductions.
• Chapter VI.: A Father's Hope.
• Chapter VII.: The End of the Matter.
• Summary of Principles Illustrated In This Volume.
• The Three Ages.
• First Age
• Second Age.
• Third Age.
• Summary of Principles Illustrated In This Volume.

Chapter I.

THE PHILOSOPHER AT HOME.

The Sun,—the bright sun of May in the western world,—was going down on the village of Briery Creek, and there was scarcely a soul left within its bounds to observe how the shadows lengthened on the prairie, except Dr. Sneyd; and Dr. Sneyd was too busy to do justice to the spectacle. It was very long since letters and newspapers had been received from England; the rains had interfered with the post; and nothing had been heard at the settlement for a month of what the minister was planning in London, and what the populace was doing in Paris. Dr. Sneyd had learned, in this time, much that was taking place among the worlds overhead; and he now began to be very impatient for tidings respecting the Old World, on which he had been compelled to turn his back, at the moment when its political circumstances began to be the most interesting to him. There had been glimpses of starlight in the intervals of the shifting spring storms, and he had betaken himself, not in vain, to his observatory; but no messenger, with precious leathern bag, had appeared on the partial cessation of the rains to open, beyond the clouds of the political hemisphere, views of the silent rise or sure progress of bright moral truths behind the veil of prejudice and passion which was for a season obscuring their lustre. Day after day had anxious eyes been fixed on the ford of the creek; night after night had the doctor risen, and looked abroad in starlight and in gloom, when the dogs were restless in the court, or a fancied horse-tread was heard in the grassy road before the house.

This evening Dr. Sneyd was taking resolution to file the last newspapers he had received, and to endorse and put away the letters which, having been read till not an atom more of meaning could be extracted from them, might now be kept in some place where they would be safer from friction than in a philosopher's pocket. The filing the newspapers was done with his usual method and alacrity, but his hand shook while endorsing the last of his letters; and he slowly opened the sheet, to look once more at the signature,—not from sentiment, and because it was the signature (for Dr. Sneyd was not a man of sentiment),— but in order to observe once again whether there had been any such tremulousness in the hand that wrote it as might affect the chance of the two old friends meeting again in this world: the chance which he was unwilling to believe so slight as it appeared to Mrs. Sneyd, and his son Arthur, and every body else. Nothing more was discoverable from the writing, and the key was resolutely turned upon the letter. The next glance fell upon the materials of a valuable tele scope, which lay along one side of the room, useless till some glasses should arrive to replace those which had been broken during the rough journey to this remote settlement. Piece by piece was handled, fitted, and laid down again. Then a smile passed over the philosopher's countenance as his eye settled on the filmy orb of the moon, already showing itself, though the sun had not yet touched the western verge of the prairie. It was something to have the same moon to look at through the same telescopes as when he was not alone in science, in the depths of a strange continent. The face of the land had changed; he had become but too well acquainted with the sea; a part of the heavens themselves had passed away, and new worlds of light come before him in their stead; but the same sun shone in at the south window of his study; the same moon waxed and waned above his observatory; and he was eager to be once more recognising her vol-canoes and plains through the instrument which he had succeeded in perfecting for use. This reminded him to note down in their proper places the results of his last observations; and in a single minute, no symptom remained of Dr. Sneyd having old friends whom he longed to see on the other side of the world; or of his having suffered from the deferred hope of tidings; or of his feeling impatient about his large telescope; or of any thing but his being engrossed in his occupation.

Yet he heard the first gentle tap at the south window, and, looking over his spectacles at the little boy who stood outside, found time to bid him come in and wait for liberty to talk. The doctor went on writing, the smile still on his face. and Temmy,—in other words, Temple Temple, heir of Temple Lodge,—crept in at the window, and stole quietly about the room to amuse himself, till his grandfather should be at liberty to attend to him. While the pen scratched the paper, and ceased, and scratched again, Temmy walked along the bookshelves, and peeped into the cylinder of the great telescope, and cast a frightened look behind him on having the misfortune to jingle some glasses, and then slid into the low arm-chair to study for the hundredth time the prints that hung opposite,—the venerable portraits of his grandfather's two most intimate friends. Temmy had learned to look on these wise men of another hemisphere with much of the same respect as on the philosophers of a former age. His grandfather appeared to him incalculably old, and unfathomably wise; and it was his grandfather's own assurance that these two philosophers were older and wiser still. When to this was added the breadth of land and sea across which they dwelt, it was no wonder that, in the eyes of the boy, they had the sanctity of the long-buried dead.

“Where is your grandmamma, Temmy?” asked Dr. Sneyd, at length, putting away his papers. “Do you know whether she is coming to take a walk with me?”

“I cannot find her,” said the boy. “I went all round the garden, and through the orchard—”

“And into the poultry yard?”

“Yes; and every where else. All the doors are open, and the place quite empty. There is nobody at home here, nor in all the village, except at our house.”

“All gone to the squirrel-hunt; or rather to meet the hunters, for the sport must be over by this time; but your grandmamma does not hunt squirrels. We must turn out and find her. I dare say she is gone to the Creek to look for the postman.”

Temmy hoped that all the squirrels were not to be shot. Though there had been far too many lately, he should be sorry if they were all to disappear.

“You will have your own two, in their pretty cage, at any rate, Temmy.”

Temmy's tearful eyes, twisted fingers, and scarlet colour, said the “no” tie could not speak at the moment. Grandpapa liked to get at the bottom of every thing; and he soon discovered that the boy's father had, for some reason unknown, ordered that no more squirrels should be seen in his house, and that the necks of Temmy's favourites should be wrung. Temmy had no other favourites instead. He did not like to begin with any new ones without knowing whether he might keep them; and he had not yet asked his papa what he might be permitted to have.

“We must all have patience, Temmy, about our favourites. I have had a great disappointment about one of mine.”

Temmy brushed away his tears to hear what favourites grandpapa could have. Neither cat, nor squirrel, nor bird had ever met his eye in this house; and the dogs in the court were for use, not play.

Dr. Sneyd pointed to his large telescope, and said that the cylinder, without the lenses, was to him no more than a cage without squirrels would be to Temmy.

“But you will have the glasses by and by, grandpapa, and I——”

“Yes; I hope to have them many months hence, when the snow is thick on the ground, and the sleigh can bring me my packages of glass without breaking them, as the last were broken that came over the log road. But all this time the stars are moving over our heads; and in these fine spring evenings I should like very much to be finding out many things that I must remain ignorant of till next year; and I cannot spare a whole year now so well as when I was younger.”

“Cannot you do something while you are waiting?” was Temmy's question. His uncle Arthur would have been as much diverted at it as Dr Sneyd himself was; for the fact was, Dr. Sneyd had always twice as much planned to be done as any body thought he could get through. Temmy did not know what a large book he was writing, nor how much might be learned by means of the inferior instruments; nor what a number of books the philosopher was to read through, nor how large a correspondence was to be carried on, before the snow could be on the ground again.

“Now let us walk to the creek” was a joyful sound to the boy, who made haste to find the doctor's large straw hat. When the philosopher had put it on, over his thin grey hair, he turned towards one of his many curious mirrors, and laughed at his own image.

“Temmy,” said he, “do you remember me before I wore this large hat? Do you remember my great wig?”

“O yes, and the black, three-cornered hat. I could not think who you were the first day I met you without that wig. But I think I never saw any body else with such a wig.”

“And in England they would not know what to make of me without it. I was just thinking how Dr. Rogers would look at me, if he could see me now, he would call me quite an American,—very like a republican.”

“Are you an American? Are you a republican?”

“I was a republican in England, and in France, and wherever I have been, as much as I am now. As to being an American, I suppose I must call myself one; but I love England very dearly, Temmy. I had rather live there than any where, if it were but safe for me; but we can make ourselves happy here. Whatever happens, we always find afterwards, or shall find when we are wiser, is for our good. Some people at home have made a great mistake about me; but all mistakes will be cleared up some time or other, my dear: and in the mean while, we must not be angry with one another, though we cannot help being sorry for what has happened.”

“I think uncle Arthur is very angry indeed. He said one day that he would never live among those people in England again.”

“I dare say there will be no reason for his living there; but he has promised me to forgive them for misunderstanding and disliking me. And you must promise me the same thing when you grow old enough to see what such a promise means.—Come here, my dear. Stand just where I do, and look up under the eaves. Do you see anything?”

“O, I see a little bird moving!”

Temmy could not tell what bird it was. He was a rather dull child—usually called uncommonly stupid—as indeed he too often appeared. Whither his wits strayed from the midst of the active little world in which he lived, where the wits of everybody else were lively enough, no one could tell—if, indeed, he had any wits. His father thought it impossible that Temple Temple, heir of Temple Lodge and its fifty thousand acres, should not grow up a very important personage. Mrs. Temple had an inward persuasion that no one understood the boy but herself. Dr. Sneyd did not profess so to understand children as to be able to compare Temmy with others, but thought him a good little fellow, and had no doubt he would do very well. Mrs. Sneyd's. hopes and fears on the boy's account varied, while her tender pity was unremitting: and uncle Arthur was full of indignation at Temple for cowing the child's spirit, and thus blunting his intellect. To all other observers it was but too evident that Temmy did not know a martin from a crow, or a sycamore from a thorn.

“That bird is a martin, come to build under our eaves, my dear. If we were to put up a box, I dare say the bird would begin to build in it directly.”

Tommy was for putting up a box, and his grandpapa for furnishing him with favourites which should be out of sight and reach of Mr. Temple. In two minutes, therefore, the philosopher was mounted on a high stool, whence he could reach the low eaves; and Temmy was vibrating on uptoe, holding up at arms' length that which, being emptied of certain mysterious curiosities, (which might belong either to grandpapa's apparatus of science, or grandmamma's of house-wifery.) was now destined to hold the winged curiosities which were flitting round during the operation undertaken on their behalf.

Before descending, the doctor looked about him, on the strange sight of a thriving uninhabited village. Everybody seemed to be out after the squirrel hunters. When, indeed, the higher ground near the Creek was attained, Dr. Sneyd perceived that Mr. Temple's family was at home. On the terrace was the gentleman himself, walking backwards and forwards in his usual after-dinner state, His lady (Dr. Sneyd's only daughter) was stooping among her flowers, while Ephraim, the black boy, was at tending at her heels, and the figures of other servants popped into sight and away again, as they were summoned and dismissed by their master. The tavern, kept by the surgeon of the place, stood empty, if it might be judged by its open doors, where no one went in and out. Dods was not to be seen in the brick-ground; which was a wonder, as Dods was a hard-working man, and his task of making bricks for Mr. Temple's grand alterations had been so much retarded by the late rains that it was expected of Dods that he would lose not a day nor an hour while the weather continued fair. Mrs. Dods was not at work under her porch, as usual, at this hour; nor was the young lawyer, Mr. Johnson, flitting from fence to fence of the cottages on the prairie, to gather up and convey the news of what had befallen since morning. About the rude dwelling within the verge of the forest, there was the usual fluttering of fowls and yelping of dogs; but neither was the half-savage woodsman (only known by the name of Brawn) to be seen loitering about with his axe, nor were his equally uncivilized daughters (the Brawnees) at their sugar troughs under the long row of maples. The Indian corn seemed to have chosen its own place for springing, and to be growing untended; so rude were the fences which surrounded it, and so rank was the prairie grass which struggled with it for possession of the furrows. The expanse of the prairie was undiversified with a single living thing. A solitary tree, or a cluster of bushes here and there, was all that broke the uniformity of the grassy surface, as far as the horizon, where the black forest rose in an even line, and seemed to seclude the region within its embrace. There was not such an absence of sound as of motion. The waters of the Creek, to which Dr. Sneyd and Tommy were proceeding, dashed along, swollen by the late rains, and the flutter and splash of wild fowl were heard from their place of assemblage,—the riffle of the Creek, or the shallows formed by the unevenness of its rocky bottom. There were few bird-notes heard in the forest; but the horses of the settlement were wandering there, with bells about their necks. The breezes could find no entrance into the deep recesses of the woods; but they whispered in their play among the wild vines that hung from a height of fifty feet. There was a stir also among the rhododendrons, thickets of which were left to flourish on the borders of the wood; and with their rustle in the evening wind were mingled the chirping, humming, and buzzing of an indistinguishable variety of insects on the wing and among the grass.

“I see grandmamma coming out of Dods's porch,” cried Temmy. “What has she been there for, all alone?”

“I believe she has been the round of the cottages, feeding the pigs and fowls, because the neighbours are away. This is like your grandmamma, and it explains her being absent so long. You see what haste she is making towards us. Now tell me whether you hear anything on the other side of the Creek.”

Temmy heard something, but he could not say what,—whether winds, or waters, or horses, or in-sects, or all these. Dr. Sneyd thought he heard cart wheels approaching along the smooth natural road which led out of the forest upon the prairie. The light, firm soil of this kind of road was so favourable for carriages, that they did not give the rumbling and creaking notice of their approach which is common on the log road which intersects a marsh. The post messenger was the uppermost person in Dr. Sneyd's thoughts just now, whether waggon wheels or horse tread greeted his ear. He was partly right and partly wrong in his present conjectures. A waggon appeared from among the trees, but it contained nobody whom he could expect to be the bearer of letters;—nobody but Arthur's assistant Isaac, accompained by Mr. Temple's black man Julian, bringing home a stock of groceries and other comforts from a distant store, to which they had been sent to make purchases.

The vehicle came to a halt on the opposite ridge; and no wonder, for it was not easy to see how it was to make further progress. The Creek was very fine to look at in its present state; but it was anything but tempting to travellers. The water, which usually ran clear and shallow, when there was more than enough to fill the deep holes in its bed, now brought mud from its source, and bore on its troubled surface large branches, and even trunks of trees. It was so much swollen from the late rains that its depth was not easily ascertainable; but many a brier which had lately overhung its course from the bank was now swaying in its current, and looking lost in a new element. Isaac and Julian by turns descended the bank to the edge of the water, but could not learn thereby whether or not it was fordable. Their next proceeding was to empty the cart, and drive into the flood by way of experiment.— The water only half filled the vehicle, and the horse kept his footing admirably, so that it was only to drive back again, and to bring the goods, —some on the dry seat of the waggon, and some on the backs of Isaac and Julian, as the one drove, and the other took care of the packages within. Two trips, it was thought, would suffice to bring over the whole, high and dry.

“What are you all about here?” asked Mrs. Sneyd, who had come up unobserved while her husband and grandchild were absorbed in watching the passage of the Creek. “The goods arriving! Bless me! I hope they will get over safely. It would be too provoking if poor Arthur should lose his first batch of luxuries. He has lived so long on Indian corn bread, and hominy, and wild turkeys, and milk, that it is time he should be enjoying his meal of wheaten bread and tea.”

“And the cloth for his new coat is there, grandmamma.”

“Yes; and plenty of spice and other good things for your papa. I do not know what he will say if they are washed away; but I care much more for your coffee, my dear,” continued she, turning to the doctor. “I am afraid your observations and authorship will suffer for want of your coffee. Do try and make Isaac hear that he is to take particular care of the coffee.”

“Not I, my dear,” replied Dr. Sneyd, laughing. “I would advocate Arthur's affairs, if any. But the men seem to be taking all possible care. I should advise their leaving the goods and cart together on the other side, but that I rather think there will be more rain before morning, so as to make matters worse to-morrow, besides the risk of a soaking during the might. Here they come! Now for it! How they dash down the bank! There! They will upset the cart if they do not take care.”

“That great floating tree will upset them. What a pity they did not see it in time! There! I thought so.”

The mischief was done. The trunk, with a new rush of water, was too much for the light waggon. It turned over on its side, precipitating driver, Julian, and all the packages into the muddy stream. The horse scrambled and struggled till Isaac could regain his footing, and set the animal free, while Julian was dashing the water from his face, and snatching at one package after another as they eddied round him, preparatory to being carried down the Creek.

Dr. Sneyd caught the frightened horse, as he scampered up the briery bank. Mrs. Sneyd shouted a variety of directions which would have been excellent, if they could have been heard; while Temmy stood looking stupid.

“Call help, my dear boy,” said Dr. Sneyd.

“Where? I do not know where to go”

“Do you hear the popping of guns in the wood? Some of the hunters are coming back. Go and call them.”

“Where? I do not know which way.”

“In the direction of the guns, my dear. In that quarter, near the large hickory. I think you will find them there.”

Temmy did not know a hickory by sight; but he could see which way Dr. Sneyd's finger pointed; and he soon succeeded in finding the party, and bringing them to the spot.

“Arthur, I am very sorry,” said the doctor, on seeing his son come running to view the disaster. “Mortal accidents, my dear son! We must make up our minds to them.”

“Yes, father, when they are purely accidents: but this is carelessness,—most provoking carelessness.”

“Indeed, the men did make trial of what they were about,” said the doctor.

“The great tree came down so very fast!” added Temmy.

“Yes, yes. I am not blaming Isaac. It was my carelessness in not throwing a bridge over the Creek long ago. Never mind that now! Let us save what we can.”

It was a sorry rescue. The cart was broken, but it could be easily mended. The much-longed-for wheaten flour appeared in the shape of a sack of soiled pulp, which no one would think of swallowing. The coffee might be dried. The tea was not altogether past hope. Sugar, salt, and starch, were melted into one mass. Mr. Temple's spices were supposed to be by this time perfuming the stream two miles below; his wax candles were battered, so that they could, at best, be used only as short ends; and the oil for his hall lamps was diffusing a calm over the surface of the stream. Mrs. Sneyd asked her husband whether some analogous appliance could not be found for the proprietor's ruffled temper, when he should hear of the disaster.

The news could not be long in reaching him, for the other party of squirrel-hunters, bringing with them all the remaining women and children of the village, appeared from the forest, and the tidings spread from mouth to mouth. As soon as Temmy saw that Uncle Arthur was standing still, and looking round him for a moment, he put one of his mistimed questions, at the end of divers remarks.

“How many squirrels have you killed, uncle? I do not think you can have killed any at all; we saw so many as we came up here! Some were running along your snake fence, uncle; and grandpapa says they were not of the same kind as those that run up the trees. But we saw a great many run up the trees, too. I dare say, half a dozen or a dozen. How many have you killed, uncle?”

“Forty-one. The children there will tell you all about it.”

“Forty-one! And how many did David kill? And your whole party, uncle?”

Arthur gave the boy a gentle push towards the sacks of dead squirrels, and Temmy, having no notion why or how he had been troublesome, amused himself with pitying the slaughtered animals, and stroking his cheeks with the brushes of more than a hundred of them. He might have gone on to the whole number bagged,—two hundred and ninety-three,—if his attention had not been called off by the sudden silence which preceded a speech from uncle Arthur.

“Neighbours,” said Arthur, “I take the blame of this mischance upon myself. I will not say that some of you might not have reminded me to bridge the Creek. before I spent my time and money on luxuries that we could have waited for a while longer; but the chief carelessness was mine, I freely own. It seems a strange time to choose for asking a favour of you—”

He was interrupted by many a protestation that his neighbours were ready to help to bridge the Creek; that it was the interest of all that the work should be done, and not a favour to himself alone. He went on:—

“I was going to say that when it happens to you, as now to me, that you wish to exchange the corn that you grow for something that our prairies do not produce, you will feel the want of such a bridge as much as I do now; though I hope through a less disagreeable experience. In self-defence, I must tell you, however, how little able I have been till lately to provide any but the barest necessaries for myself and my men. This will show you that I cannot now pay you for the work you propose to do,”

He was interrupted by assurances that nobody wanted to be paid; that they would have a bridging frolic, as they had before had a raising frolic to build the surgeon's tavern, and a rolling frolic to clear Brawn's patch of ground, and as they meant to have a reaping frolic when the corn should be ripe. It should be a pic-nic. Nobody supposed that Arthur had yet meat, bread, and whisky to spare.

“I own that I have not,” said he. “You know that when I began to till my ground, I had no more capital than was barely sufficient to fence and break up my fields, and feed me and my two labourers while my first crop was growing. Just before it ripened, I had nothing left; but what I had spent was well spent. It proved a productive consumption indeed; for my harvest brought back all I had spent, with increase. This increase was not idly consumed by me. I began to pay attention to my cattle, improved my farm buildings, set up a kiln, and employed a labourer in making bricks. The fruits of my harvest were thus all consumed; but they were again restored with increase. Then I thought I might begin to indulge myself with the enjoyment for which I had toiled so long and so bard. I did not labour merely to have so much corn in my barns, but to enjoy the corn, and whatever else it would bring me,—as we all do,—producing, distributing, and exchanging, that we may afterwards enjoy.”

“Not quite all, Mr. Arthur,” said Johnson, the lawyer. “There is you brother-in-law, Mr. Temple, who seems disposed to enjoy everything, without so much as soiling his fingers with gathering a peach. And there is a certain friend of ours, settled farther east, who toils like a horse, and lives like a beggar, that he may hoard a roomful of dollars.”

“Temple produces by means of the hoarded industry of his fathers,—by means of his capital,” replied Arthur. “And the miser you speak of enjoys his dollars, I suppose, or he would change them away for something else. Well, friends, there is little temptation for us to hoard up our wealth. We have corn instead of dollars, and corn will not keep like dollars.”

“Why should it?” asked Dods the brickmaker. “Who would take the trouble to raise more corn than he wants to eat, if he did not hope to exchange it for something desirable?”

“Very true. Then comes the question, what a man shall choose in exchange. I began pretty well. I laid out some of my surplus in providing for a still greater next year; which, in my circumstances, was my first duty. Then I began to look to the end for which I was working; and I reached forward to it a little too soon. I should have roasted my corn ears and drank milk a little longer, and expended my surplus on a bridge, before I thought of wheaten flour and tea and coffee.”

“Three months hence,” said somebody, “you will be no worse off (except for the corn ears and milk you must consume instead of flour and tea) than if you had had your wish. Your flour and tea would have been clean gone by that time, without any return.”

“You grant that I must go without the pleasure,” said Arthur, smiling. “Never mind that. But you will. not persuade me that it is not a clear loss to have flour spoiled, and sugar and salt melted together in the creek; unless, indeed, they go to fatten the fish in the holes. Besides, there is the mortification of feeling that your toil in making this bridge might have been paid with that which is lost in the purchase of luxuries which none will enjoy.”

Being vehemently exhorted to let this consideration give him no concern, he concluded,

“I will take your advice, thank you. I will not trouble myself or you more about this loss; and I enlarge upon it now only because it may be useful to us as a lesson how to use the fruits of our labour. I have been one of the foremost to laugh at our neighbours in the next settlement for having,—not their useful frolics, like ours of to-morrow,—but their shooting-matches and games in the wood, when the water was so bad that it was a grievance to have to drink it. I was as ready as any one to see that the labour spent, on these pastimes could not be properly afforded, if there were really no hands to spare to dig wells. And now, instead of asking them when they mean to have their welling frolic, our wisest way will be to get our bridge up before there is time for our neighbours to make a laughing-stock of us. When that is done, I shall be far from satisfied. I shall still feel that it is owing to me that my father goes without his coffee, while he is watching it, rough the night when we common men are asleep.

“That is as much Temple's concern as the young man's,” observed the neighbours one to another. “Freely as he flings his money about, one would think Temple might see that the doctor was at least at well supplied with luxuries as himself.” “Why the young man should be left to toil and make capital so painfully and slowly, when Temple squanders so much, is a mystery to every body.” “A quarter of what Temple has spent in making and unmaking his garden would have enabled Arthur Sneyd's new field to produce double, or have improved his team: and Temple himself would have been all the better for the interest it would have yielded, instead of his money bringing no return. But Temple is not the man to lend a helping hand to a young farmer,—be he his brother-in-law or a mere stranger.”

Such were the remarks which Arthur was not supposed to hear, and to which he did not therefore consider himself called upon to reply. Seeing his father and mother in eager consultation with the still dripping Isaac, he speedily completed the arrangements for the next day's meeting, toils, and pleasures, and joined the group. Isaac had but just recollected that in his pocket he brought a packet of letters and several newspapers, which had found their way, in some circuitous manner, to the store where he had bean trafficking. The whole were deplorably soaked with mud. It seemed doubtful whether a line of the writing could ever be made out. But Mrs. Sneyd's cleverness had been proved equal to emergencies nearly as great as this. She had once got rid of the stains of a stand full of ink which had been overset on a parchment which bore a ten-guinea stamp. She had recovered the whole to perfect smoothness, and fitness to be written upon. Many a time had she contrived to restore the writing which had been discharged from her father's manuscript chemical lectures, when spillings from his experiments had occurred scarcely half an hour before the lecture-room began to fill. No wonder her husband was now willing to confide in her skill—no wonder he was anxious to see Temmy home as speedily as possible, that he might watch the processes of dipping and drying and unfolding, on which depended almost the dearest of his enjoyments,—intercourse with faithful friends far away.