Uncle Zophar's Apples.

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for dear life, and fairly carry her home in my arms to her heartbroken ma."

"Enough said under that head," I remarked, not looking up from my book, for this exploit was one I did n't glory in.

"That will do, for I remember,'" said mother, clipping the thread at the end of the seam in her sewing-work. "Suppose you go down, Loren" (for all the evening the boy had been a docile listener, while he carved a new cross-gun for little Mary), "and get us some of the apples that the children's Uncle Zophar sent from the old place."

CHAPTER III.

LITTLE BOATS SET OUT FROM SHORE.

The first great break in our lives was when Oliver went to Beloit, fourteen miles down the river, to finish his preparatory studies and enter college. He had rarely spent an evening away from home in all his life until he was eighteen. Busy with books and papers around the evening lamp," sometimes "running a (writing) race" with me, going into the dining-room to teach Mike and other "farm hands" to read and write, cipher and spell, busy with his chores and sports and farm work, Oliver, with his perpetual good-humor, was a tremendous institution to have about, and the shadow was heavy when he first started out from dear old Forest Home into the world. He was to board at the home of Dr. Lathrop, who was Professor of Natural Science at Beloit, and whose wife was Rev. Dr. Clement's daughter and mother's cousin.

With his easy-going, happy nature and his dear love for the old place, my brother would have lived on contentedly all his days, I think, a well-to-do, industrious, and yet book-loving farmer. But mother gave her only son no rest. He was to go to college, carve out a future for himself, be a minister, perhaps, that was her dearest wish and father's for the most gifted of their children.

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From the first, we had gone regularly to Beloit to Commencement," that great day when the people gathered in the grove, and President Chapin, so stately and so handsome, sat in the midst on the gayly festooned platform, with noble looking Professor Emerson and the other "college dons" beside him. We had heard Horace White, now a famous journalist, in New York City, pronounce his graduation speech, and I hardly knew which most impressed my fancy, his address on "Aristocracy," or his lemon-colored gloves. We had rejoiced in the brass band on these occasions, and hummed its airs for a whole year after-

The Women Folks Left Behind.

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ward. And now "" Ollie was to go, and sometime he would be a part of all this pageant, but not the girls. This gave to me those "long, long thoughts" of which my cousin Morilla Hill had read to me in a classical book :

"A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."

(Only, when she read it, I always said "a girl's will.")

So the new suit of clothes was made, the trunk packed with every good and pleasant thing that we could think of, even to a little note from Mary, "just to surprise him when he's lonesome," and I made a pen-wiper for him-one of my very few achievements in that line. Mother put in his Bible, Watts "On the Mind," and Beecher's "Lectures to Young Men," and Bridget got up such a dinner of roast turkey as made him sigh at thought of how much too much he had eaten, as well as at thought of how much too little he should get in future of flavors from the bounteous old farm.

Father and he mounted the big wagon, stored with bed, stove, etc., for his room, and that precious new trunk; crack went the whip, round rolled the wheels, and Oliver was gone for aye!

"Does God want families to be broken up this way?" was my query, as I watched them from the front piazza until my brother's waving handkerchief was lost to view. "I don't believe He does, and it would be far better for Oliver and for me, too, if we had gone together."

"Or, better still, if we could all go together, and you three children still live on at home, until you had homes of your own," said mother gently, as we three women folks, feeling dreadfully left behind, wiped our eyes and went in to help Bridget clear away the dinner dishes.

Later, in one vacation time, Oliver went to yoke up his "steers," when one of them deliberately kicked him squarely below the knee, and he fell to the ground with a broken leg-the second in the family, for father had had the same mishap at the County Fair. Mike and Edward got a board, lifted him upon it, brought him in and laid him on his bed, while Bridget followed with her apron over her head, crying aloud, and his mother and sisters threw the harness upon Jack, and got him ready for Mike to drive to town to bring Dr. Chittenden. Our faces were white,

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First Sight of "the East."

but we didn't cry at all, and as for Oliver, he, who never had but this one accident, and was almost never ill, bore the long and painful visitation like a philosopher. Indeed, his good-nature never forsook him, but his jokes and quaint, original turns of expression, made bright and pleasant every place he entered. Carried to his room now, he lay there all through the heat of summer, his devoted mother, for the first few nights after the accident, never undressing, but remaining all night at his bedside, with her hand upon his, that he might not, by moving, hazard the successful knitting of the bone. She was the most famous nurse in all the region round about-so firm and gentle, with resources for every emergency, and such a heart, full of courage and good cheer, that I often said: "I have yet to hear my mother utter the first downcast word."

We girls read many books aloud to our brother that summer: "Don Quixote," "Gil Blas," the "Dunciad," "Gulliver's Travels," and others that he liked.

One autumn, when mother had gone East once more, this time to take care of Oliver, who had been at Oberlin in school and went down to Churchville, where all the "relatives" lived, because he fell ill, father told us on very short notice, to "pack our trunk and be ready, for he was going East to see the folks, and we might go along."

We girls had never been on the cars in our lives, except once, to attend the State Fair at Milwaukee and spend a day or two at "Rosebank," Charles Gifford's home; and no shriek of locomotive had disturbed the town of Janesville until ten years after we came to live near there. So it was with an indescribable twittering of heart and tongue that this great news was received. Bridget set at work to get up "such a lunch as would make your eyes glisten." Loren wondered how "we could bear to go off and leave the old place"; the Hodge children bemoaned our prospective absence; Professor and Mrs. Hodge helped us to plan and pack the new trunk father had brought us. My only thought was to get my pet manuscripts in, and Mary, while not forgetful of the nice new clothes that father had provided, was specially intent upon having her sketch-board and paints along.

Mike carried our happy trio to Afton, five miles down the river, where we took the train, and in less than a night and a