laboratory which had seen the forming of many Congressional orators.

In so confident a way was this information imparted, that visitors were
compelled to receive it in all humbleness, and as a matter of course.
They could only feign that Twynintuft had been a household word from
their tenderest infancy, and that they have made pilgrimage to Foxden to
gaze upon the earthly abiding-place of this remarkable man. Accordingly,
young ladies sent their best respects from the hotel, and "Would dear
Mrs. Widesworth spare them a few leaves from her grandfather's oak?" And
simple young gentlemen, with a morbid passion for notorieties and moral
sentiments, forwarded little books, bound in sheepskin heavily gilt,
inscribed, "World-Thoughts of My Country's Gifted Minds," and "Mrs.
Widesworth is requested to write any maxim which her experience of life
may have suggested on page 209 of this volume, just between the remarks
of the Living Skeleton and the autograph of the Idiot Albino."

If invited to visit any one of consideration in Foxden, you would no
sooner have deposited your travelling-bag and subsided into the
arm-chair than you would perceive a curious nervous twitching about the
features of your host, which would finally culminate in these, accents
of patronizing triumph:--"My dear Sir, I shall be glad to take you
across the street to pay your respects to Mrs. Widesworth!" Every
householder quivered with anxiety until this rite had been solemnly
performed.

Mrs. Widesworth, the actual, was a plump, well-to-do widow, of
threescore years. She lived among her fellow-creatures, but not of
them,--and that in a sense far more comfortable than Byronic misanthropy
could imagine. She managed to keep all the tumult and competition of
this rough world just outside the little whitewashed fence which