One day when we were walking, he leaned his back against a rail fence and discoursed of the shortness of the time since the date fixed for the creation, measured by human lives.

"Why," he said, "sixty old women like Nabby Kettle" (a very old woman in Concord), "taking hold of hands, would span the whole of it." He repeats this in one of his books, adding, "They would be but a small tea-party, but their gossip would make universal history." Another man who was famous as a writer went to school and afterward tended store in Concord in my childhood.

This was George H.Derby, better known as John Phoenix.

He was also very fond of small boys.

I remember his making me what I thought a wonderful and beautiful work of art, by taking a sheet of stiff paper of what was called elephant foolscap, and folding it into a very small square, and then with a penknife cutting out small figures of birds and beasts.