“Goods are reported to be very scarce and high in all the Northern cities. They are high in this place, and advancing every day. Groceries are dearer than I have seen them since 1815, and it is thought they will be yet dearer. “‘That will do!’ I hear you say, ‘as I am not a merchant.’ Well, no more of it! I must charge you again to be very, _very_ careful of yourself. Kiss our little children for father. I shall hurry through my business here as soon as possible and hasten my return to my home. “May the Lord bestow on you His choicest blessings and grant a speedy return of health! Remember me in your prayers. Adieu, my Love! “Your own S.” The sere and yellow sheet is marked on the outside, in the upper left-hand corner, “_Single_,” in the lower, “_Mail_,” and in the upper right-hand, “12 _cents_.” This was in the dark ages when there was but one steamer per week to Baltimore, and there were not stages enough to carry the passengers from the Monument City to New York; when the railway to Fredericksburg was a dream in the minds of a few Northern visionaries, and the magnetic telegraph was not even dreamed of. My mother has told me that, in reading the newspaper aloud to her father in 1824, she happened upon an account of an invention of one George Stephenson for running carriages by steam. Captain Sterling laughed derisively. “What nonsense these papers print! You and I won’t live to see that, little girl!” I heard the anecdote upon an express train from Richmond to New York, his “little girl” being the narrator. In those same dark ages, strong men, whom acquaintances never accused of cant, or suspected of sentimentality, went to evening prayer-meetings, and accounted it a delight to hear two sermons on Sunday; laid pulpit teachings to heart; practised self-examination, and wrote love-letters to their own wives. If this were not the “Simple Life” latter-day philosophists exploit as a branch of the New Thought Movement, it will never be lived on this low earth. Our first home in the little shire-town (then “Scottville”) was at “Bellevue,” a red brick house on a hill overlooking the hamlet. Separated from Bellevue by two fields and the public highway, was “Erin Hill,” built by one of the same family, which had, it is needless to observe, both Irish and French blood in it. Erin Hill was for rent just when Uncle Carus decided to bring his family from Montrose—where they had lived for ten years—to the village. This is the fittest time and place in which to sketch the pastor of Mount Carmel Church. _Martin Chuzzlewit_ was not written until a score of years later. When it was read aloud in our family circle, there was not a dissenting voice when my mother uttered, in a voice smothered by inward mirth, “Mr. Carus!” as Mr. Pecksniff appeared upon the stage.