No getting out of it now! I planned this thing one day in the old schoolhouse.

Oh, did you know Mr.Burrows had given up teaching?
Grown too old.

Queer, isn't it?
Don't seem as if anybody was growing old except me.

At first I wasn't going to have my feast on the Fourth, because, you remember, it was on _that_ day that our blessed Ray left us; but, talking with Mr.
Minturn about it, he said Ray would have been delighted with it all,--and so he would, you know.

Don't think we are going to gather in all Albany; it's only the younger scholars of the mission school, in which my wife and I are interested.
"Tell Howard and Kitty to be sure and come; they can put their visit a few weeks earlier as well as not.
"Oh, by the way, if you have heard from Ellis Holbrook lately, you are singing 'Glory Hallelujah' by this time! "I am writing this in the counting-room, and am in a great hurry, though you wouldn't think it.