THERE is a village in New Hampshire which has produced twenty-six editors, and it was in allusion to this circumstance, that a pious old deacon thus remarked: "Yes, there were twenty-six of 'em but as they've all left town, I reckon the Lord won't lay it up again us."
A visitor at Marshfield, Daniel Webster's country residence, records with admiration the fact that he found a superb wood-fire in the great statesman's library at an early hour in the morning. Triumphantly he drew the inference that the great expounder had been spending the morning there while the family still clung to the pillow. We think the assertion of the statesman's early habits is, by such inference, "not proven." It is related that when a boy in New Hampshire, being trundled off with his brother Ezekiel early to bed, there arose between the two, an argument upon some statement in the Farmer's Almanac. The boys rose and went down, half naked as they were, to settle the point in dispute by the light of a pine knot, at the kitchen fire. If Daniel Webster learned thus early the advantage of artificial light in the dark hours, and obtained it under difficulties, it is hardly to be supposed that, as a habit, he turned off the gas at sundown, and took the first beams of light at "sun-up " instead.
In the early part of the present century, up among the hills of New Hampshire, a young collegiate of remarkable attainments and promise, formed an attachment for a young lady of much beauty and worth. Timid and retiring as he always was through his long life, he never made known his love. She however was not unaware of his unexpressed attachment. Time and events separated them. Like the subjects of Whittier's beautiful "Maud Muller," each married another. Subsequently the student became a professor in one of our foremost New England colleges. His talents were of a high and extraordinary order. His genius and learning found vent in philosophical and other works, which speedily found their way into the English-speaking colleges and academies of the two continents, and through translations, into the universities of France and Germany. At last the weight of years compelled him to give up the duties of his professorship; the partner of his honors and toils had gone to rest. A white-haired man, he took his staff and wandered off on a—to him—long journey into a distant city of a distant State. Amidst all the cares and labors of more than half a century, there was an object that he had never forgotten for a single day; the object of his first love up among the hills of New Hampshire. In that distant city, that object was still living, a silver-haired widow. He called at her home; their recognition of each other was as instant and mutual as was that of the Highlander and the lassie a half a century before. The interview was long, and to them, touchingly interesting. At last the man rose to leave. To those who knew the venerable professor, his dignity, his reserve, and his bashfulness, what follows will seem passing strange. Taking the venerable lady by the hand, for the first and last time in his life, looking her tenderly in the face and calling her by her Christian name, he said: "I have a favor to ask of you, will you grant me a kiss?" The request was granted. Their lips met with all the fervency, if not the passion of
