While calling at the old basement bookshop on East Broadway I suddenly heard a horrible wailing and lamenting on the street. A funeral procession was hurrying by, followed by several women in an open carriage. Their hair was flying, their faces were red with weeping, their bodies were swaying grotesquely to the rhythm of their violent cries. The oldest in the group continued mechanically to address the body in the hearse: “Husband dear, upon whom have you left us? Upon whom, husband dear?” A young girl facing her in the vehicle looked about in a terrified manner, seized every now and then the hand of her afflicted mother, and tried to quiet her. The frightful scene, with its tragic display, its abysmal ludicrousness, its barbarous noise, revolted me. I had seen the like of it before, but that was in another life. I had once been part of such a performance myself, and the grief of it still lingered somewhere in my motley soul. But now I could only think of the affecting simplicity, the quiet, unobtrusive solemnity of a burial I had witnessed the previous spring in the West. The afternoon following my arrival I flew uptown to see Esther. She waved to me and smiled as I approached--she had been waiting on the “stoop.” As she shook my hand in her somewhat masculine fashion, she took me in with a glance, and the first thing she said was: “What a genteel person you have become! You have changed astonishingly.” “Do you think so?” I asked her. “I am afraid I haven’t. At least they do not think so in Missouri.” Then she told me that she had got only ten points, but that she was expecting three more in the fall. She was almost resigned to wait another year before entering college. That would enable her to make her total requirements, save up a little more money, and get her breath. “A woman is not a man, you know,” she added. “I am beginning to feel the effects of it all. I am really exhausted. Geometry has nearly finished me. And mother has added her share. She is no longer young, and this winter she was ill. I have worried and I have had to send money. But let us not talk about my troubles. You are full of things to tell me, I know.”