Thus, for a long time, Blodgett ruled with an iron hand his little world, with no one to dream of disputing his right or of doubting his capacity, till at length fate let fall a bit of romance into the strong but placid stream of his life, and tinged it all with rose color. He wrote some poetry, but it is obsolete--that is, it is not now in existence. While this streak of romance lasted he looked, for all the world, like a gilt-edged mathematical problem drawn on rawhide. It was a great event in our neighborhood when Miss Grace Holland, a yellow-haired, blue-eyed, very handsome and well educated young lady from Louisville, Kentucky, came to spend the summer with Parson Holland, our preacher, and the young woman's uncle. Kentucky girls are all sweet. My wife was a Kentucky girl. All the young men fell in love with Miss Holland right away, but it was of no use to them. Blodgett, in the language of your fast youngsters, "shied his castor into the ring," and what was there left for the others but to stand by and see the glory of the pedagogue during the season of his wooing? It would have done your eyes good to see the pedagogue "slick himself up" each Saturday evening preparatory to visiting the parson's. He went into the details of the toilette with an enthusiasm worthy a better result. Ordinarily he was ostentatiously pious and grave, but now his nature began to slip its bark and disclose an inner rind of real mirthfulness, which made him quite pleasant company for Miss Holland, who, though a mere girl, was sensible and old enough to enjoy the many marked peculiarities of the pedagogue. On Blodgett's side it was love--just the blindest, craziest kind of love, at first sight. As to Miss Holland, I cannot say. One never can precisely say as to a woman; guessing at a woman's feelings, in matters of love, is a little like wondering which makes the music, a boy's mouth or the jewsharp--a doubtful affair. Great events never come singly. When it rains it pours. If you have seen a bear, every stump is a bear. A few days after the advent of Miss Holland came a pop-eyed, nervous, witty little fellow with a hand press, and started a weekly paper in our village. A newspaper in town! It was startling. Blodgett from the first seemed not to relish the innovation, but public sentiment had set in too strongly in its favor for him to jeopardize his reputation by any serious denunciations. A real live paper in our midst was no small matter. Everybody subscribed, and so did Blodgett. It did, formerly, require a little brains to run a newspaper, and in those days an editor was looked upon as nearly or quite as learned and intelligent as a pedagogue; but everybody, however ignorant himself, could not fail to see that one represented progress, the other conservatism, and formerly most persons were Ultra-Conservatives. This, of course, gave the pedagogue a considerable advantage.