a drawer her last bit of blue ribbon, and tied them, saying, "This is the way he liked to see my hair tied when I was at my father's cottage. I shall never tie it so again."

When the good vicar came to see Alice, as he did every day, she met him with me all nicely done up in a paper in her hands, and asked him if he would be so good as to take me to the hair dresser who had advertised for hair, make the best bargain he could for her, and, with the proceeds, get the few necessaries for commencing her small school. The good man cheerfully promised to do so, took the parcel from Alice, and carried it to his own house.

And so I bade farewell to dear Alice, and her neat cottage, and her sweet children. I was parted forever from that innocent head that had cherished only good and pure thoughts. I was no longer to be dressed by her dear hands. I was never again to shade and adorn her lovely face, nor fall in ringlets around her sloping shoulders, nor ever tremble again with the beatings of her gay and generous heart, as I often had when she let me fall over her neck and shoulders.

Nothing that ever had life in it could be insensible to such a sorrow as this. How I envied the few locks she kept around her precious forehead! How I wished that scissors had never been invented!

The good curate, faithful to his promise, took me to the hair dresser in London, according to the direction in the advertisement; and, before opening the paper which contained me, told him the story of Alice, of her trials, and of her excellent character and conduct, of her present need, and of her purpose to support and educate her children by her own efforts. He told him that there never was such a beautiful head of hair, and that he hoped he would be willing to give something handsome for it.

When the old clergyman opened the paper, and exhibited me to the hair dresser, he took me out as fondly as if I had been a baby, and shook me so as to make the ringlets curl again, but they would not.

I felt the difference between the old man's hard fingers, and rough shake, and the soft touch of the dear Alice.

"Is it not beautiful?" said the old man.

"It is well enough," said the dealer. "I shall have to make a man's wig of it. The curls will all boil out."

You may imagine my horror at these words; and, as for the poor vicar, he seemed thunderstruck.

"If I had any money to spare," said he, "I would buy this beautiful hair myself, and have it framed with a glass over it, and hang it up in my best parlor, with that blue ribbon that looks so like her; it's as handsome as a picture; and then her dear children should have it at my death."

Whether it was that the hair dresser was afraid of losing me, or that his heart was slightly touched with compassion for Alice and her orphan children, I know not; but he offered the good curate a sum for me which satisfied him.

As the curate gave me up, he untied the blue ribbon, folded it up nicely, and put it into his pocket; and I think he dropped a tear as he did so.

The wig maker examined me again when he was by himself. "A fine head of hair it really is," said he. "It will make a good wig for a youngish sort of a man; and the curls will make it work easier."

Then he tied me up with a piece of twine, and tossed me into a large drawer with great bunches of hair of all colors and fineness.

Here I remained for I know not how long, without air or light, in this disagreeable company. At last, one day we were all taken out, and what we were made to endure I now shudder to think of. We were boiled, we were pulled and mauled and greased; in short, I wonder we had a whole hair left; but, after undergoing every thing you can imagine, I found myself on a pole in the shape of a gentleman's wig, covered with high-scented pomatum and powder.

No one would have recognized me as the same beautiful hair that had adorned the head of Alice. There were a number of poles with wigs on them close by me, and I knew, as a matter of course, that I must look just like them. They looked perfectly hateful to me, and I felt disgusted with myself, because I knew I resembled them.

It is now a puzzle to me how men could have ever been so foolish as to make such a thing as I am, to put on their heads; these great unmeaning curls, this ugly club, as they called it, hanging down behind, and this horrid grease and powder too.

Most of my life, of course, has been passed in this horrid shape in which you now see me; but the remembrance of my early days clings to me, and the love of freedom, and the sense of beauty which I acquired when the wind played through my natural curls as they covered the head of my dear Alice, have never forsaken me. It was then only that I truly lived. But, forgive me—I have the weakness of old age, and love to talk of youthful pleasures.

One morning, in the year seventeen hundred and seventy-eight, when I was just twenty-eight years old, a gentleman of middle age came into the hair dresser's shop, and asked to look at his wigs. I was shown to him with some others. After examining us all, and trying on several, he chose me, because, he said, he thought I was made of the finest hair.

"This," said he, "will visit the American colonies, and probably remain there, for that will, I think, be my home."

I rejoiced to hear this, for I was weary of my present life, and longed for some variety.

The good gentleman who purchased me seemed well satisfied with my looks; but, when I saw myself in the glass, upon his long, narrow face, with his great bottle nose, and cheeks like the sides of a sulky, and all my pretty curls and my bright color gone, I wonder that each hair did not stand on end with fright; most likely it would have stood up, but for weight of pomatum and powder.

Soon after my owner purchased me, he set sail for America. As I was his new and best wig, I was packed carefully in a box, and knew nothing till he arrived here, and was settled in his place of residence.

The first time I was taken out of my box was on Sunday, when I was carefully adjusted on the Squire's head. I call him Squire, for I soon found that Squire was the title every one gave him, as he was the most important personage in the town in which he lived. I was as well pleased as a wig could be with the appearance of things in and around the house I was to inhabit. It was in a village about thirty miles from Boston, and was like an English country gentleman's house. A wide hall passed through the middle of it, with a grand staircase. From the doors at either end of the hall ran rows of elm trees. One led to the high road, the other up a gentle hill, on the top of which was a pretty burying ground with a path through it leading to a small church.

The Squire had a black man whom he called his boy, and who was, in fact, his slave, but whom he treated like a friend and brother.

Some years after, when slavery was abolished in Massachusetts, the Squire called Cato to him, and said, "Cato, you are no longer my slave; you are free."

"But, massa, you will not sell me."

"No, Cato, you are a freeman; I have no right to sell you. I don't think I ever had any right to sell you; but now the law of the land makes you free, and I am glad of it."

"Then I can stay with you of my own free will, massa."

"Yes, Cato, you can stay or go, just as you please."

"Then, massa, I stay with you for love, and not cause I am your slave. Now I your friend." And Cato never left the Squire till the day of his death. But to return to my story.

The Squire, as I said, put me on very carefully, and then as carefully put over me his three-cornered hat, and took his gold-headed cane, and, with Cato behind him, walked reverently up the hill to church.

I was accustomed to the Episcopal church, where dear Alice went every Sunday; but this was a Presbyterian church, and I had never been in one before.

As I said, had not my hairs lost their power of motion by what I had endured from the scissors, and the