At Christmas parties his place was never empty; and while he was there, mirth never flagged. Perhaps their sports were not so boisterous as they would have been if he had not been a spectator; but they were quite as pleasant at the time, and a great deal pleasanter when looked back upon from the next day. He used to sit in one corner, by the huge, roaring fire, and look on, apparently as much interested as they themselves were. Nothing went amiss; and there was never wanting some slight, good-natured remark or act, to rectify mistakes and set them all going again. But much as he was loved by the villagers, he was no less respected. They did not even know his name. Many would have been glad to, and wearied themselves by indirect methods to find it out. But as no one had courage to ask him, and as it never happened to fall from him incidentally, they remained in the dark about it. He was known and addressed however, by the appellation of 'the Lawyer,' as their conversation with him was chiefly asking his advice on points of law too knotty for them, which he freely gave. He affected no mystery or reserve; yet there was something in his bearing, affable and unaristocratic as it was, that caused those very men--who, if the governor of the state had come among them, would have slapped him on the back, and offered him a glass of liquor--to rise in his presence and approach him with respect. My bright-eyed informant, with her musical voice, recollected, a good while ago, when she was about ten years old, and he had become gray and wrinkled--though he never needed a staff, nor was his eye dim--that he rowed over one spring afternoon, and requested the men to leave their work for a few minutes, and hear something that he had to say to them. Accordingly, they collected 'considerable of a little crowd' around her father's store. The lawyer stood in the door, while she made her way through the throng and sat down on the door-step, at his feet. She did not remember all that he said; only that he talked to them for about half an hour, in a calm, conversational tone, on the importance of building school-houses and educating their children. They seemed to be much pleased with what he said; and after another half hour's free discussion, the whole village turned out, and went to work felling trees and hewing timber; and in the course of a few days a substantial school-house was erected. From that time forth, she and all her brothers and sisters, and all her play-mates, at stated hours and seasons, were rigidly imprisoned therein, and diligently instructed in the rudiments of science.