DURING my three days' stay in the town, I woke up every morningwith the impression that I was a boy--for in my dreams the faceswere all young again, and looked as they had looked in the old times--but I went to bed a hundred years old, every night--for meantime Ihad been seeing those faces as they are now.

Of course I suffered some surprises, along at first,before I had become adjusted to the changed state of things.

I met young ladies who did not seem to have changed at all;but they turned out to be the daughters of the young ladiesI had in mind--sometimes their grand-daughters. When youare told that a stranger of fifty is a grandmother, there isnothing surprising about it; but if, on the contrary, she isa person whom you knew as a little girl, it seems impossible.

You say to yourself, 'How can a little girl be a grandmother.'

It takes some little time to accept and realize the fact that while youhave been growing old, your friends have not been standing still,in that matter.

I noticed that the greatest changes observable were with the women,not the men. I saw men whom thirty years had changed but slightly;but their wives had grown old. These were good women; it is very wearingto be good.

There was a saddler whom I wished to see; but he was gone.

Dead, these many years, they said. Once or twice a day,the saddler used to go tearing down the street, putting on hiscoat as he went; and then everybody knew a steamboat was coming.

Everybody knew, also, that John Stavely was not expecting anybodyby the boat--or any freight, either; and Stavely must have knownthat everybody knew this, still it made no difference to him;he liked to seem to himself to be expecting a hundred thousandtons of saddles by this boat, and so he went on all his life,enjoying being faithfully on hand to receive and receiptfor those saddles, in case by any miracle they should come.

A malicious Quincy paper used always to refer to this town, in derisionas 'Stavely's Landing.' Stavely was one of my earliest admirations;I envied him his rush of imaginary business, and the displayhe was able to make of it, before strangers, as he went flyingdown the street struggling with his fluttering coat.

But there was a carpenter who was my chiefest hero. He was a mighty liar,but I did not know that; I believed everything he said. He was a romantic,sentimental, melodramatic fraud, and his bearing impressed me with awe.

I vividly remember the first time he took me into his confidence. He wasplaning a board, and every now and then he would pause and heave a deep sigh;and occasionally mutter broken sentences--confused and not intelligible--but out of their midst an ejaculation sometimes escaped which made me shiverand did me good: one was, 'O God, it is his blood!' I sat on the tool-chestand humbly and shudderingly admired him; for I judged he was full of crime.

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