them 'Experiment Stations.' The minute I heard that I says to myself, ‘That's the name! That's what the place where Maria came back from, and that Elder Janeway knew so much about, had ought to be called, an Experiment Station.' But at that time, in Maria's day, I'd never heard of this name no more than I had of Elder Janeway, and the place or state he was always writing and talking about. But, after all, I don't believe I care to go back on what ma and pa and all the good folks of old times held on those subjects. There was n't any mincing matters those days; 't was the very best or the very worst for everybody as soon as they departed this life, and no complaints made. I'm certain sure any of those ancestors of mine, particular on the Wells side -- that was pa's, you know — would have taken the worst, and been cheerful about it, too, rather than have had the whole plan upset and a half-and-half place interduced. But then, if there ain't such a locality, where in the world did Maria come from that time? I tell you, it beats me.

"Now this very minute something comes into my head that I have n't told you about, that I don't believe I ever told anybody about; I don't know as I can tell it now. It is like a sound that comes to you from way, way off, that you think you catch, and then it's gone. It was just only a word Maria used two or three times after she came back, a dreadful, dreadful curious word. It was n't like any word I ever heard spoke or read in a book; 't was n't anything I can shape out in my mind to bring back now. First time I heard it she was sitting on the doorstep at night, all by herself. It was a nice night with no moon, but thousands of shining little stars, and the sky so sort of dark bluish and way, way off. Maria did n't know I was nigh, but I was, and I was peeking at her as she sat there. She looked up right overhead at the sky, and the shining and the blue, and then she spoke that word, that curious, singular word. I say she spoke it, and that I heard it, but somehow that don't make it plain

what I mean. Seem's if she only meant it, thought it, and I sort of catched it, felt it — Oh, that sounds like crazy talk, I know, but I can't do any better. Somehow I knew without using my ears that she was saying or thinking a word, the strangest, meaningest, oh, the curiousest word! And once she said it in her sleep when I went into her room in the night, and another time as she sat by her own grave in the little burying-ground, and I had followed her there unbeknownst. I tell you, that was n't any word they use in Vermont, or in the United States, or anywheres in this whole living world. It was a word Maria brought back, I'm certain sure from - well, wherever she'd been

that time.

"Well, it was wearing to see Maria those days, growing poorer and poorer, and bleacheder and bleacheder, and failing up steady as the days went by. And one day just at dusk, when she and me were sitting by ourselves, I mustered up courage to speak out. 'Maria,' I says, 'you don't appear to be satisfied these times.'

''Satisfied!' she says, 'course I ain't. Was I ever satisfied in all my born days? Was n't that the trouble with me from the beginning? Ain't it that got me into all this dreadful trouble? Deary, deary me, if I'd only a stayed where' She shut up quick and sudden, looking so mournful and sorry and wore out that I could n't hold in another minute, and I burst out, 'Maria, if you feel that way about it, and I can see myself it's just killing you, why in the world don't you-go back again?' I was scared as soon as I'd said it, but Maria took it real quiet. 'Don't you suppose I've thought of that myself?" she says. 'I ain't thought of much else lately, I tell you. But as far's I know, and I know a lot more than you do about it, there ain't but just one way to go there, and that,' she says, speaking kind of low and solemn, 'that is - the way - I went before. And I own up, Lyddy,' says she, 'I'm scaret o' that way, and I scursely dast to do it again.' 'But,' I says, getting bolder when I saw she wasn't

""That's different,' says Maria. But I saw she was thinking and studying over something all the evening, and after she went to her bedroom she was walking about, up and down, up and down, the biggest part of the night. In the morning when it got to be nigh on to seven o'clock, and she not come down, I felt something had happened, and went up to her room. She was n't there. The bed was made up, and everything fixed neat and nice, and she had gone away.

"Oh, dear,' I says to Mr. Weaver, 'that poor thing has started off all alone, weak as she is, to find her way back.' 'Back where?' says Pollos. Just as if I knew.

"But we both agreed on one point. We could n't do anything. We felt to realize our own ignorance, and that this was a thing Maria must cipher out by herself, or with somebody that was way, way above us to help her. It was a dreadful long day, I tell you. I could n't go about my work as if nothing had happened, and I could n't get out of my head for one single minute that poor woman on her curious, lonesome travels. Would she find the road? I kept a-thinking to myself, and was it a hard, dark one like the one everybody else had to go on before they got to the afterwards-life, a valley full of shadows, according to Scripture, with a black, deep river to ford, a 'swelling flood,' as the hymn says?

out and white she looked, had offered her a ride, but whichever direction they were going she had always answered the same thing, that she was n't going their way. It was nigh nine o'clock, and we were just shutting up the house for the night, when I heard steps outside and the gate screaked.

"I felt in a minute that it was Maria, and I opened the door as quick as I could. There she was trying to get up the steps, and looking just ready to drop and die right there and then. It took Pollos and me both to get her in and upstairs. It was n't any time for questions, but when Mr. Weaver had gone, and I was getting her to bed, I says, as I saw her white face with that dreadful look of disappointedness, 'You poor thing, you're all beat out.' 'Yes,' she whispers, her voice most gone she was so wore out, and I could n't find the road. There ain't but one, leastways to go there by,—and that's the way I went first-off. I'd oughter known it. I'd oughter known it.'

"I couldn't bear to see her so sorrowful and troubled, and I said what I could to comfort her by using Scripture words and repeating the promises made there about that dark valley and the deep waters, and the help and company provided for the journey. But that mournful look never left her face, and she kept a-whispering, "That's for once; not a word about the second time. Mebbe there ain't any provision for the second time.' And what could I say?

"I believe I haven't told you how much time the poor woman spent those days in the graveyard, sitting by her own grave. I can't get over that, even after all these years, that queer, uncommon sight of a person watching over their own burying place, weeding it and watering it as if their own nighest friend lay there. I don't see why, either. I don't even know whether her body was there. Folks don't have two, and she'd brought one back, and was in it now. And, as far as we could see, it was the very same body she wore when she died, and that we'd buried next

to Mr. Bliven. Anyway, she appeared to like that place, and showed a lot of interest in taking care of it. There was n't any headstone. We had ordered one, but it had n't come home when she returned, and we had told Mr. Stevens to keep it a spell till we fixed what to do about it. I was glad it was n't up. I can't think of anything that would be more trying than to see your own gravestone with your name and age and day you died, with a consoling verse, all cut out plain on it. I know, one time, I saw her putting a bunch of sweet-williams on that grave. She looked sort of ashamed when she saw I was watching her, and she says, a mite bashful, 'You know they was always her favorite posies.' 'Whose?' I asked, just to see what she'd say. But she was so busy fixing the sweet-williams she did n't take any notice.

says

"Maria failed up after this right along, and pretty soon she was that weak she could n't get as far as the graveyard, hardly even down to the gate. And I to Mr. Weaver that she need n't worry about finding the way back to where she belonged, for she'd just go as she went the other time if she did n't flesh up and get a little ruggeder. One day, when I went into her room, she says to me, 'Lyddy, I want help, and mebbe I can get it in the old way we used to try. You fetch me the big Bible and let me open it without looking, and put my finger on a verse and then you read it out. Mebbe they'll take that way of telling me what to do, just mebbe.'

"I never approved of that kind of getting help, it always seemed like tempting Providence, but I felt I must do most anything that would help satisfy that poor woman, and I got the Bible. She opened it, her lean hands shaking, and she laid one of her bony fingers on a passage. must say it took my breath away when I saw how appropriate it was, how pat it came in. "T was in Ezekiel, and it went this way: 'He shall not return by the gate whereby he came in.'

I

“Maria give a sort of cry and laid her

head back against the pillow on the big chair she was sitting in. "There, there,' she says, all shaking and weak, 'I most knew it afore, and now I'm certain sure.

I've got to go- the · old

66

way.'

And so she did. After all, I was n't with her when she went, and it was n't from our house she started. I got run down and pindling from taking care of her and studying how to help her out of her troubles. So Mr. Weaver wrote to John Nelson, and after a spell it was fixed that he should take Maria over to his house in Hanover, and he did. It was a hard journey for her, so weak as she was, and she did n't stand it very well. But she had one more journey to take, the one she'd been dreading so long, and trying to put off.

"It was n't so dreadful hard, I guess, after all, for they said she fell asleep at the last like a baby. Just before she went, she says very quiet and calm, all the worry and fret gone out of her voice, she says to John and Harriet, who was standing by the bed, 'I'm dreadful tired, and I guess I'll drowse off a mite. And mebbe I'll be let to go in my sleep.' Then in a minute she says slow and sleepy, her eyes shut up, 'And if I do, wherever they carry me this time, I guess when I wake I shall be up satisfied,' and she dropped off.

"I guess she was, for she went for good that time and stayed. She was buried there in Hanover in John's lot. We all thought 't was best. It would have been awk'ard about the old grave, you know, whether to open it or not, and what to do about the coffin. So we thought 't was better to start all over again as if 't was the first time, with everything bran-new, and nothing second-handed, and we did. But Maria Bliven's the only person I know that's got two graves. There's only one headstone, though, for we took the one we'd ordered before from Mr. Stevens, he altering the reading on it a little to suit the occasion. You see, the first time we'd had on it a line that was used a good deal on gravestones then, 'Gone for

"Well," said good Elder Lincoln one July day as we met on the Lisbon road, "have you heard Mrs. Weaver's account of Maria Bliven's unexpected return?"

The Elder had been at Streeter Pond fishing for pickerel, for he belonged to that class styled by dear old Jimmy Whitcher "fishin' ministers." He had not met with great success that day, but he had been all the morning in the open, and there was about him a breezy, woodsy, free look which seemed to dissipate shadows, doubts, and dreads. "Yes," I replied, "I have heard it all. What in the world do you make of it?"

said the Elder. "There's no conspicuous moral to that story. Mrs. Weaver did not make the most of her opportunities, and we do not gain much new light from her account. Old Cephas Janeway, who wrote a ponderous work on Probation which nobody read, was largely responsible, I guess, for the feverish dream of the old woman. But to her it's all true, real, something that actually happened. And, do you know, somehow I almost believe it myself as I listen to the homely details, and it brings 'thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls.'

999

He was silent a minute, then taking up his fishing basket, very light in weight that day, he raised the lid, looked with unseeing eyes at its contents, and said absently, "I can't help wishing I had met Maria after she came back. There is just one thing" He did not complete the sentence, and I saw that his thoughts were far away. With a good-by word which I know he did not hear, I turned

THE spirit of a country or a city is a thing about which it is easy to bandy words. It is, however, a thing which can be defined with clearness only in the terms of human lives. The student reads a treatise on national or local characteristics; but a race accepts John Bull and Brother Jonathan as personifications which answer essential questions of imagination and intelligence. The incessant demand of the mind is for the concrete. It is not upon deductions and theories that we insist, but upon examples, living

1 The Life of John A. Andrew, Governor of Massachusetts, 1861-1865. By HENRY GREENLEAF PEARSON. In two volumes. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1904.

figures which in themselves shall sum up the truth we are seeking. It is fortunate, therefore, that the American citizen who wishes to know more about Massachusetts, especially in her relation to the national government, may turn at this time to two full-length biographical portraits of the first consequence. In Andrew 1he will find the figure of the man who in his chief magistracy preeminently typified the spirit of Massachusetts throughout the heroic period of civil war. Senator Hoar, who tells his own story, stands, on

2 Autobiography of Seventy Years. By GEORGE F. HOAR. In two volumes. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1903.

the other hand, as the typical representative of his state, through thirty-five continuous years of service at the national capital, where he has been concerned with the legislation and the policies which in many instances had their origin in the war that Andrew helped to fight. In the lives of these two men much of the national history of Massachusetts during the past half century may be found.

John Albion Andrew was one of the Americans characteristically raised up for a great emergency. It has become a commonplace of our history that new occasions not only teach new duties, but produce the men to perform them. No doubt a few village Hampdens and guiltless Cromwells have been overlooked; yet, thanks to the flexibility of our institutions, enough of them have always been found for the work in hand. If Andrew could have foreseen the task he had to do in the world, and had set about his preparation for it by the most elective course of training, he could hardly have been better equipped. The inheritance and cultivation of the ethical tendencies of his New England nature, the simplicity of his country boyhood and of his training at Bowdoin College, the native gift of persuasive public speech, the religious spirit, the belief in prayer, that love of poetry, which in his busiest days made the Golden Treasury his constant traveling companion, that practical philanthropy which turned so much of his law practice into the unremunerative service of the friendless, above all, that zeal for human freedom which placed him squarely in the ranks of anti-slavery reformers, - these, with a supreme gift of "getting on" with men and women, were eminent qualifications for his office. Not all of them, to be sure, were immediately counted in his favor by the conservative element; but in the full record of his life, their value stands clearly forth.

The governorship of any important state at any time is a sufficiently complicated task. Nothing less than a statesman was needed to rule and direct Massa

chusetts in a period when the chief command of her land and sea forces became a pressing military problem, when the relations between the state and the national officials were under constant strain, when public opinion itself was a thing of distracting uncertainty. The tests of Andrew's statesmanship came thick and fast, and out of the abundance of his equipment he promptly met them. To enumerate either the tests or the successive actions by which he proved himself their equal would be to summarize the greater part of Mr. Pearson's work. But there are certain points which separate themselves from the total story, and indicate that outline of Andrew's personality and work which becomes the picture to be remembered. No one of these points is more striking than the utter independence of the man. It was an inherent part of his nature to see things in their moral bearing. The full development of such a nature involves the necessity of arriving at one's own conclusions, and acting upon them in spite of opposition. At different periods Andrew was bound to displease the "hunker" portion of the community repeating its cry of peace, peace, when there was no peace, and no less surely - to disappoint the radical friends of his unofficial days through what seemed to them a stultifying timidity and caution. The truth, in almost every instance, was that he knew the very heart of his people, and took the course which that heart finally approved. To this end-and here is another of the distinguishing points — he drew to himself, by his wisdom or rare good fortune, a group of friends and advisers who rendered him inestimable help. His very independence stood the stronger chance of bearing the genuine brand because at his side stood such men as John Murray Forbes, Henry Lee, Jr., and the members of that loyal staff which surrounds him in the photograph, doubly humanized by our knowledge that a chorus of Johnny Schmoker was needed to keep the exhausted governor awake through the taking of the pic