tation about dress for those balls, with my friend and second self, Nancy Maria Hyde, was wont to resolve itself into the interrogation, "Will you wear a full, or a half mane?" The former implied the whole mass of tresses pendent; the other, a portion of them confined by the comb, and falling gracefully over it. It was pleasant to us to dress with a sisterly similarity, and mane was the term which she had adopted for our chief natural adornment.
Quite satisfied in all respects was my dear mother with the salubrious result of her theory of dancing. If her quick eye chanced to detect—what no other would have discerned—some indication of too close application to books, at the close of a long winter evening, she would allure me, just before retiring, to dance up and down our spacious kitchen, after her own spirited singing of appropriate tunes. Occasionally she used, as a substitute, her own native humor or histrionic powers to elicit laughter, which she said was the friend of good sleep. She coincided, without knowing it, in the philosophy of the Rev. Dr. Edmund Dorr Griffin, who, while president of a college, once convened, during the prevalence of a northeasterly storm, his theological students, addressing them in a solemn, impressive, tone:
"I am satisfied with your class, save in one respect."
Every eye regarded him with earnest attention.
"Of your proficiency in study, your general deport-
