alone; though it had long been made in a similar way on the coast of France, and elsewhere. This was in the year 1776, at which time, on account of the war, salt was scarce and dear. The Historical Collections contain an interesting account of his experiments, which we read when we first saw the roofs of the salt-works. Barnstable county is the most favorable locality for these works on our coast, there is so little fresh water here emptying into ocean. Quite recently there were about two millions of dollars invested in this business here. But now the Cape is unable to compete with the importers of salt and the manufacturers of it at the West, and, accordingly, her salt-works are fast going to decay. From making salt, they turn to fishing more than ever. The Gazetteer will uniformly tell you, under the head of each town, more correctly than I can, how many go a-fishing, and the value of the fish and oil taken, how much salt is made and used, how many are engaged in the coasting trade, how many in manufacturing palm-leaf hats, leather, boots, shoes, and tinware, and then it has done, and leaves you to imagine the more truly domestic manufactures which are nearly the same all the world over.

Late in the afternoon, we rode through Brewster, so named after Elder Brewster, for fear he would be forgotten else. Who has not heard of Elder Brewster? Who knows who he was? This appeared to be the modern-built town of the Cape, the favorite residence of retired sea-captains. It is said that "there are more masters and mates, of vessels which sail on foreign voyages, belonging to this place than to any other town in the country." There were many of the modern American houses here, such as they turn out at Cambridgeport, standing on the sand; you could almost swear that they had been floated down Charles River, and

drifted across the bay. I call them American, because they are paid for by Americans, and "put up" by American carpenters; but they are little removed from lumber, only eastern stuff disguised with white paint, the least interesting kind of drift-wood to me. Per haps we have reason to be proud of ou naval architecture, and need not go to the Greeks, or the Goths, or the Italians, for the models of our vessels. Seacaptains do not employ a Cambridgeport carpenter to build their floating houses, and for their houses on shore, if they must copy any, it would be more agreeable to the imagination to see one of their vessels turned bottom upward, in the Numidian fashion. We read that, "at certain seasons, the reflection of the sun upon the windows of the houses in Wellfleet and Truro [across the inner side of the elbow of the Cape] is discernible with the naked eye, at a distance of eighteen miles and upward, on the county road." This we were pleased to imagine, as we had not seen the sun for twenty-four hours.

At length, we stopped for the night at Higgins's tavern, in Orleans, feeling very much as if we were on a sand-bar in the ocean, and not knowing whether we should see land or water ahead when

the mist cleared away. We here overtook two Italian boys, who had waded thus far down the Cape through the sand, with their organs on their backs, and were going on to Provincetown. What a hard lot, we thought, if the Provincetown people should shut their doors against them! Whose yard would they go to next? Yet we concluded that they had chosen wisely to come here, where other music than that of the surf must be rare. Thus the great civilizer sends out its emissaries, sooner or later, to every sandy cape and light-house of the New World, which the census-taker visits, and summons the savage there to surrender.

"I DON'T think much, my young

friend, of those Mormons! I have had some reasons of my own for disliking them!" said Parson Field to me, as we sat together, one August noon, in the porch of his red house at Plainfield.

"Do tell me, sir," said I, settling myself in an easy attitude to hear his story for a story from Parson Field was not to be despised-his quaint simplicity bringing out, in old-time and expressive phrases, whatever he describes with the clear fidelity of an interior by Mieris. "Do tell me," said I again, with a deeper emphasis; whereat the old gentleman looked at me over his spectacles, and, smiling benignantly into my eager face, began.

"When I first came to Plainfield," said he, "more than thirty years ago, I had been a minister of the Lord only ten years, and I had been settled for that period of time in a large city, where I served acceptably to a worthy congregation; but certain reasons of my own induced me to leave that situation, and come here to live, where also I found acceptance, and not many months after I came there was a considerable reviving of the work in this place, and many believed. Of these was a certain Joseph Frazer, a young Scotchman, concerning whom I felt much misgiving, lest he should take the wrong path; but he, in due season, joined himself to the church, and edified the brethren in walk and conversation; so that, when he left Plainfield and settled in the West Indies, we were loth to have him go.

"Some years afterwards we heard he was married there to a lady of Spanish extraction, and a Catholic; and, after ten years elapsed, she died, leaving him one child, a daughter, eight years of age, and with her he came to Plainfield, desiring that the child, whom he had named Adeline, after his own mother, should have a New England training.

"But, wonderful are the way of Providence! On his return to Cuba, he perished in the vessel, which went down in a heavy gale off Cape Hatteras; and VOL. V.-41

when the news came to his mother, old Mrs. Frazer, she sent for me that I should tell the child Adeline, for she had given proofs of a singular nature, ardent and self-confident in the extreme. I took my hat, and went over to Mrs. Frazer's, with a very heavy heart, for the grief of a child is a fearful thing to me, and to be the bringer of evil tidings, that shall stain the pureness and calm of a child's thoughts with the irreparable shadow of death, is no light thing, nor easily to be done. I entered into the house one day in June: it was a very sweet day, and, as I walked quietly into the low kitchen, I saw Adeline, with her head resting on her hands, and her large eyes eagerly gazing out of the window at the gambols of a scarlet-throated humming-bird. I went close to her, and thought to myself that I would speak, but I did not, for I saw that, in her little pale face, which made me more sad than before; and I had it on my lips to say,Adeline, are you homesick?' (which was the thing of all others I should not say) when suddenly she turned about, and answered the question before I spoke it.

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Sir,' said she, 'I wish I was in Cuba. I had just such a humming-bird at home; and I fed it with orange boughs full of white flowers, every day; but you have no orange trees here, and I have no papa!'

"It seemed to me that the child's angel had thus opened the way for me to speak, and I began to say some things about the love of our universal Father, when she laid her little hand on my arm with a fearfully strong pressure. 'Mr. Field,' said she, is my papa dead?' I never shall forget the eyes that looked that question into mine. I felt like an unveiled spirit before their eager, piercing stare. I did not answer except by a strong quiver of feeling that would run over my features, for I loved her father even as a kinsman, and I needed to say nothing more, for the child fell at my feet quite rigid, and I called Mrs. Frazer, who tried all her nurse-arts to restore little Adeline; but was forced, at last, to send for a physi

cian, who bled the child, and brought her round.

"In the mean time I had gone home to prepare my sermon, for it was not yet finished, and the day was Friday; but I kept seeing that little lifeless face, all orphaned as it was, and the Scripture, As one whom his mother comforteth,' was so borne in upon my mind, that, although I had previously. fixed upon one adapted to a setting forth of the doctrine of election, I was wrought upon to make the other the subject of my discourse: and truly the people wept; almost all but Adeline, who sat in the square pew with her great eyes fixed upon me, and her small lips apart, like one who drinks from the stream of a rock.

"The next day I was resting, as my custom is, after the Sabbath: and in a

warm,

6

fair day, I find no better rest than to sit by the open window, and breathe the summer air, and fill my eyes and heart with the innumerable love-tokens that God hath set thickly in Nature. I was, therefore, at my usual place, wrapt in thought, and beholding the labours of a small bird which taught her young to fly, when I felt a light, cold touch, and, turning, saw little Adeline beside me. 'Sir,' said she, without any preface, when my papa went away, he left with me a letter, which he said I was to give you if he died.' So far she spoke steadily, but there the small voice quivered and broke down. I took the letter she proffered me, and, breaking the seal, found it a short but touching appeal to me, as the spiritual father of Joseph Frazer, to take his own child under my care, and be as a father to her, inasmuch as his mother was old and feeble, and also to be executor of his will, of which a copy was enclosed. I said this much to the child as shortly as I could, and with her grave voice she replied, 'Sir, I should like to be your little girl, if you will preach me some more sermons.' Now I was affected at this answer; not the less that the leaven of pride, which worketh in every man, was fed by even a baby's praise; and, putting on my hat, I walked over to Mrs. Frazer's house and laid the matter before her. She was not, at first, willing to give Adeline up, but at length, after much converse to and fro, she came to my conclusion, that the child would be better in my hands, inasmuch

as she herself could not hope for a long continuance and, as it was ordered, she died the next summer. I sent for my sister Martha, who was somewhat past marriageable years, but kind and good, to come and keep house for me, and from that time Adeline was as my own child. But I must hasten over a time, for I am too long in telling this.

"In course of years the child grew up, tall and slender, of a very stately carriage, and having that scriptural glory of a woman, long and abundant hair.

"She was still very fervid in her feelings, but reserved and proud, and I fear I had been too tender with her for her good, inasmuch as she thought her own will and pleasure must always be fulfilled, and we all know that is not one of the ordinations of Providence.

"As Adeline came to be a woman, divers youths of my congregation were given to call of a Sabbath night, with red apples for me, and redder cheeks for Adeline, who was scarcely civil to them, and often left them to my conversation, which they seemed not to relish so much as would have been pleasing to human nature.

"But my sainted mother, who was not wanting in the wisdom of this world, was used to say that every man and woman had their time of crying for the moon, and while some knew it to be a burning fire, and others scornfully called it cheese, and if they got it, either burned their fingers, or despised their desire, still all generations must have their turn, and truly, I believed it, when I found that Adeline herself began to have a pining for something which I could not persuade her to specify. The child grew thin and pale, and ceased the singing of psalms at her daily task, and I could not devise what should be done for her; though Martha strongly recommended certain herb teas, which Adeline somewhat unreasonably rebelled against. However, about this time, my attention was a little turned from her, as there was much religious awakening in the place, and among others, whom the deacons singled out as special objects of attention, was one John Henderson, a frequent visitor at our house, and a young man of good parts and kindly feeling, as it seemed, but of a peculiar nature, being easily led into either right or wrong, yet still given to fits of stubbornness,

when he could not be drawn, so to speak, with a cart-rope.

"Now Adeline had been a professor of religion for some years, but it did not seem to me that she took a right view of this particular season, for many times she refused to go to the prayermeetings, even to those which were held with special intentions towards the unconverted; and many times, on my return, I found her with pale cheeks and red eyes, evidently from tears. About this time, also, she began to take long, solitary walks, from which she returned with her hands full of wild flowers, for it was now early spring; but she cared nothing for the flowers, and would scatter them about the house to fade, without a thought. In the mean time, the revival progressed, but, I lament to say, with no visible change in John Henderson. He had gotten into one of his stubborn moods of mind, and neither heaven nor hell seemed to affect him. The only softening I could perceive in the young man was during the singing of hymns, which was well done in our meeting-house, for Adeline led the choir, and I noticed that, whenever that part of the exercises began, John Henderson would lift up his head, and a strange color and tender expression seemed to melt the hard lines of his face.

"Somewhere about the latter end of April, as I was returning from a visit to a sick man, I met John coming from a piece of woods, that lay behind my house about a mile, with his hands full of liverwort blossoms. I do not know why this little circumstance gave me comfort, yet, I have ever observed, that a man who loves the manifestations of God in his works is more likely to be led into religion than a brutal or a mere business man: so I was desirous of speaking to the youth, but when he saw me he turned from the straight path, and, like an evil-doer, fled across the fields another way. I did not call after him, for some experience has constrained me to think that there is no little wisdom in sometimes letting people alone, but I took my own way home, and, having put on my cloth shoes to ease my feet, and being in somewhat of a maze of thought, I went up to my study, as it seemed, very quietly, for I entered at the open door and found Adeline sitting in my arm-chair by the window, quite unaware of my nearness.

I well remember how like a spirit she looked that day, with her great eyes raised to a cloud that rested in the bright sky, her soft black hair twisted into a crown about her head. and her light dress falling all over the chair, while in her hands, lying between the slight fingers, and by the bluer veins, was clasped a bunch of liverwort blossoms. Then I perceived, for the first time, why my child was crying for the moon, and that John Henderson cared for the singing and not for the hymns, at which I sorrowed. But I sat down by Ada, and taking the flowers out of her cold hands, began to say that I had met John Henderson on the road with some such blossoms, at which she looked at me even as she did when I told her about her father, and, seeing that I smiled, and yet was not dry-eyed, nor quite at rest, the tears began, slowly, to run over her eye-lashes, and in a few very resolute words she told me that Mr. Henderson had asked her that morning to marry him.

"Now I knew not well what to say, but I set myself aside, as far as I could, and tried not to remember how sore a trial it would be to part with Ada, and I reasoned with her calmly about the youth, setting forth, first, that he was not a professing Christian, and that the Scripture seemed plain to me on that matter, though I would not constrain her conscience if she found it clear in this thing: and, second, that he was a man who held fast to this world's goods, and was like to be a follower of Mammon if he learned not to love better things in his youth; and, third, that he was a man who had, as one might say, a streak of granite in his nature, against which a feeling person would continually fall and be hurt, and which no person could work upon, if once it came in the way even of right action. To all this Adeline answered with more reason than I supposed a woman could, only that I noticed, at the end of each answer, she said in a low voice, as if it were the end of all contention, and I love him.' Whereby, seeing that the thing was well past my interference, I gave my consent with many doubts and fears in my heart, and, having blessed the child, I sent her away that I might meditate over this matter.

"When John came in the evening for his answer, I was enabled to exhort him faithfully, and, in his softened state of