ONE OF THE FUR-SEWERS. "I suppose if you'd been born on the top of a hill in New Hampshire with the stones so thick ten miles of stone wall couldn't have used 'em up, an' the steeple of the Methodist meetin'-house the only thing in sight, maybe you'd have wanted to get where you could see folks too. It was just Elkins luck to have another hill between us an' the village so't I couldn't see beyond the woods between. If there was a contrary side to anything it always fell to father, an' I'm some like him, though I've got mother's way of never knowing when I'm knocked flat, though I've had times enough to find out. But I said straight through, 'If ever there's a chance of getting to New York I'll take it. Boston won't do. I want the biggest an' the stirringest thing there is in the United States,' an' Leander felt just as I did. "Leander lived down the valley a way, an' such cobble-stones as hadn't come to our share had come to his. He'd laid wall from the time he was ten years old, and he'd sat on the hay an' cried for pure lonesomeness. His folks weren't any hands to talk, an' he couldn't even have the satisfaction of meetin' Sundays, because they was Seventh Day Baptists, an' so set a minister couldn't get near 'em. An' Leander was conscientious an' thought he ought to stay by. I didn't. I told him from the time we went to school together that I was bound to get to New York, an' that sort of fired him up, an' we've talked hours to time about what it was like, an' what we'd do if we ever got there. My folks were set against the notion, an' so were his, but he went after a while, with some man that was up in the summer an' that gave him a place in a store. I couldn't go on account of father's dying sudden an' mother's holdin' on harder'n ever to me, but she was took within the year, an' there I was, free enough, an' not a soul in the world but Leander's folks that seemed to think much one way or another how I was likely to come out. "There was a mortgage on the farm, an' Dr. Grayson foreclosed an' had most of the money for his bill; an' when things were all settled I had forty dollars in cash an' the old furniture. Leander's folks was dreadful short for things, for they'd been burned out once, an' so I just turned everything over to them but some small things I could pack in my trunk, mother's teaspoons an' such, an' walked down to the village an' took the stage for Portsmouth. I wasn't scared. I didn't care nor think how I looked. It was heaven to think I was on the way to folks an' the things folks do. I ain't given to crying, but that day I sat back in the stage an' cried just for joy to think I was going to have something different.