"Oh!" said Mrs. Hunter, in a moment. "No, though—"

"Why, you know," said Mrs. French,—"no—I guess, on the whole—"

"You remember," said the Doctor's wife to Mrs. French, with a faint smile, "the time he papered my east chamber—don't you—how he made the pattern come?"

And then they both laughed gently for a moment.

"Well, I have always known him," said Mrs. French. "But really, being asked so suddenly, it seems to drive everything out of my head."

"Yes," said Mrs. Hunter, "and it's odd that I can't think of exactly the thing, just at this min-ute; but if I do, I will run over to the parsonage this evening."

"Yes, so will I," said Mrs. French; "I know that I shall think of oceans of things just as soon as you are gone."

"Won't you stay to tea?" said Mrs. Hunter, as Holt rose to go. "The Doctor has gone; but we never count on him."

"No, I thank you," said Mr. Holt. "If I am to invent a biography, I may as well be at it."

Mrs. Hunter went with him to the door.

"I must just tell you," she said, "one of Uncle Capen's sayings. It was long ago, at the time I was married and first came here. I had a young men's Bible-class in Sunday-school, and Uncle Capen came into it. He always wore a cap, and sat at meetings with the boys. So, one Sunday, we had in the lesson that verse,—you know,—that if all these things should be written, even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written; and there Uncle Capen stopped me, and said he, 'I suppose that means the world as known to the ancients?'"

Holt put on his hat, and with a smile turned and went on his way toward the parsonage; but he remembered that he had promised to call at what the local paper termed "the late residence of the deceased," where, on the one hundredth birthday of the centenarian, according to the poet's corner,—

So he turned his steps in that direction. He opened the clicking latch of the gate and rattled the knocker on the front door of the little cottage; and a tall, motherly woman of the neighborhood appeared and ushered him in.

Uncle Capen's unmarried daughter, a woman of sixty, her two brothers and their wives, and half-a-dozen neighbors were sitting in the tidy kitchen, where a crackling wood-fire in the stove was suggesting a hospitable cup of tea.

The ministers appearance, breaking the formal gloom, was welcomed.

"Well," said Miss Maria, "I suppose the sermon is all writ by this time. I think likely you 've come down to read it to us."

"No," said Holt, "I have left the actual writing of it till I get all my facts. I thought perhaps you might have thought of something else."

"No; I told you everything there was about father yesterday," she said. "I 'm sure you can't lack of things to put in; why, father lived a hundred years—and longer, too, for he was a hundred years and six days, you remember."

"You know," said Holt, "there are a great many things that are very interesting to a man's immediate friends that don't interest the public." And he looked to Mr. Small for confirmation.

"Yes, that 's so," said Mr. Small, nodding wisely.

"But, you see, father was a centenarian," said Maria, "and so that makes everything about him interesting. It's a lesson to the young, you know."

"Oh, yes, that's so," said Mr. Small, "if a man lives to be a centurion."

"Well, you all knew our good friend," said Mr. Holt. "If any of you will suggest anything, I shall be very glad to put it in."

Nobody spoke for a moment.

"There's one interesting thing," said one of the sons, a little old man much like his father; "that is, that none of his children have ever gone meandering off; we've all remained"—he might almost have said remained seated—"all our lives, right about him."

"I will allude to that," said