memory which has hitherto been to them only that of a bizarre old man. We have called the house old and new. Old it certainly was, as the blackened boards and other marks of time showed—prematurely old, from neglect. And yet it appeared new too, in that the building was never entirely finished. Paint, plaster, and care have made a new place of it since the time of which we write, for it has passed into strange hands. Why it presented the appearance of which we have been speaking, will appear in our narrative. Simon Gray’s life opened happily. There was nothing which indicated for him a splendid destiny. The path which seemed open before him was obscure, and promised to embrace only the ordinary incidents of ninety-nine lives in a hundred; but it so befell that his experience showed that strange things may happen as well to the humble as to the exalted. The prince has gilded play-things, the peasant boy plain. Both are toys after all, and both the possessors are children. Both grow up to be men only, and in every man’s heart the thoughts are mightier to himself than the marching of an army with banners. Simon received the usual elements of a practical education in a New England public school. And what was more to his benefit, he was taught by parental admonition and example the way in which he should go; and was founded in true faith in the God whom he should love. And between himself and a young woman, his neighbor, Margaret Goodenow, there grew an attachment which strengthened with their years. Neither could go back and fix the date when the other was not a chosen companion. It was love, pure and unsophisticated; and it was only when they learned by observation that they were not and could not be brother and sister to each other, that the thought came into their heads that they might be something else, still nearer and dearer. Simon continued his attentions naturally, and Margaret as naturally accepted them as matters of course. There were no vows—no protestations—no jealous fits—no frantic passages—no prudery and no affectation of concealment. None of the romantic artillery which gives eclat to the pages of a fashionable novel marked their intercourse. All went quietly and happily, without any particularly definite thought of the future; until, about the same time, Simon’s father asked him how he would like to build over against the big elm, (that same house of which we were speaking just now,) and Margaret’s mother asked her why she did not put a web for herself in the loom.