ter Scott frequently mentions Peebles in his works, and describes "the rashness and impetuosity of John Peebles, an Earl."

Alexander Smith thus improvises a song, entitled "The Tweed at Peebles: "

"I lay in my bedroom at Peebles,

With the window-curtains drawn,

While there stole over hills of pasture and pine

The unresplendent dawn.

"And in the deep silence I listened,

With a pleased, half-waking heed,

To the sound that ran through the ancient town,

The shallow, brawling Tweed.

"Was it absolute truth, or a dreaming

Which the wakeful day disowns,

That I heard something more in the stream as it ran
Than water breaking on stones?"

About two hundred years ago, a branch of the Peebles family moved into the north of Ireland, where they took an active part with other Protestants against the wrangling Irish papists, and endured much persecution. In 1718 they formed, with others, an emigrant party of one hundred, crossed the ocean, and settled in Massachusetts, where the bigoted inhabitants gathered by night, and destroyed their meeting-house. After this, under the charge of Rev. Abercrombie, they began a settlement in the town of Pelham. Bringing from Londonderry "the necessary material for the manufacture of linen," they were, as the historian avers, "industrious, frugal, and peaceful.”

One of these adventurous Peebles's penetrated into Vermont, and "drove down his stakes" in Whitingham, Windham County, near the Green Mountains. Those days the girls were buxom lasses, muscular, daring, hearts sound as ringing bells. Miss Nancy Brown, daughter of "Deacon Brown," was a towering lady, refined, hazeleyed, intellectual," the school-mistress," dreamy as the morning clouds hugging the shaggy necks of the mountains. James Peebles was sanguine, enthusiastic, intelligent, epicurean, benevolent, popular with the yeomanry, being captain of the militia. What of that romantic courtship, on a granite rock, under the shadow of an ancient elm? There the vows were plighted.

In Whitingham is an old homestead on a hill-side. Babbling near it is a little stream from springs, away to the south, in a nook so cunning. Great-grandparents, so ancient and nervous, graced, the wide fireside, drooping wintry willows, silvered with snow. The mother, young and independent, was socially antipodal to their old notions. So the honey-bees in that domestic hive buzzed with an angular industry. It was magnetic peril to "the welcome child.” Did not those maternal tears, redolent with high ambition, psychologically mold the unskilled heart of her pledge of love? The thread of life undulates into solitudes. Is it not inwoven with trying hours, like a telegraph to its battery? But the trial tempered that birdling to daring ere it fluttered on the mother's bosom. Poor, but laborious; distressed, but resolute; pensive, but heroic, she rose superior to her surroundings, and gave the world an indefatigable reformer. Sunbeams and stars, flowers and gurgling waters, cast the germ-child in the dies of beauty. She was nature's guest, Hagar in the wilderness, lonely, religious. First the blossoming summer, then the quickening autumn, then the winter, white and pure, the "sacred months," under the life-veil of destiny. Prayer, music, and meditation, the ancient clock, keeping vigils, were the "sisters of fate," that wove "a coat of many colors" for the future prophet. Thus she bound her prisoner to a checkered pilgrimage.

these were

James was born the 23d of March, 1822, Jupiter being the reigning star. The angels say they impressed that mother to call her son so, mainly because of the love the apostle John had for his brother James. He was the oldest of five sons and two daughters, all diverse in characteristics. That mother's prayer now, how like Emily Judson's over hers, "the fairest bird of Ind,”

"Doubts, hopes, in eager tumult rise.

Hear, my God! one earnest prayer:

Room for my bird in Paradise,

And give him angel plumage there!"

The gospel of childhood, a blessed rough and tumble: it whets the edge of character. Checkered as the landscape were those early years, each trivial event limning soul on the canvas of life. One of these may suffice to reveal the chemistry of the colors blending into form.

“Jimmie” had a special liking for troughs, one such was his cradle when a baby, and about his only plaything when a boy. Grow

ing bigger, seeing the other boys had sleds, he at length looked upon his old trough with a haughty disdain, and importuned his father to make him a sled. That ugly No! A sled educates to speed of thought, and a kite to lofty purpose. Both refused.

One winter's afternoon, the snow-crust hard and glary, the lad stole the bread-trough, and took a slide. On it sped with a dash and whirl, and struck against a stone, splitting it in twain. What was to be done? A moment of sad gazing, weighing consequences; and in he rushed, eyes full of tears and heart aching, to make a confession. A sharp crack on the ears, and the boy felt true justice was done. Good orthodoxy that! An ample supply of playthings for children, and persuasive discipline, are economies in household furni

ture.

This restless fellow did not take to muscular industry. He hated grindstones, axes, churns, and hoes, when imposed as tasks. Awkward in the use of tools, he could not even construct a top. "We can never make any thing of James," was said more than once with a feeling of despair. The truth was, they did not know the boy, nor touch the pulse of his genius. But he was famous for looking after young lambs. With cold bare feet at daylight in springtime, while the snow mantled the shaded rocks and hollows, he,was off into the old pasture, to see if any young lamb had been chilled by the night wind.

His ambition ran in the channel of the brooks, full of babbles and frolics. That wild country enchanted him. The flowers and birds were his companions, maple-poles his ponies, red-sticks his whips to drive them with, chips and leaves his sailing vessels in the eddying pools. He gamboled with the minnows, and owned all the butterflies and robins' eggs. Unwearied were the swift hours as he sat on his native hills, watching every thing, the stilly world at his feet.

What was that undefinable feeling, that mystic consciousness, that genius attending him in all his rambles, which seemed to be a faceimage in the water-brooks and flames of fire, -a face bending benignantly over him when locked in slumber on his rickety bed in the attic, close under the roof?

"While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped

Through many a listening chamber, cave, and ruin,
And star-lit wood, with fearful steps pursuing,

High hopes of talk with the departed dead."

CHAPTER II.

SCHOOL DAYS.

"I consider a human soul without education like marble in the quarry; which shows none of its inherent beauties until the skill of the polisher fetches out the colors, makes the surface shine, and discovers every ornamental cloud, spot, and vein that runs through the body of it." - ADDISON.

THAT red schoolhouse, just a mile off, "round by the pond," shingled all over, what a tale it tells of "lads and lasses O!"— of snow-balls, poutings, whippings, and "turning somersets! How changed now! The saplings around it are tall trees; the incisions in the bark where the scholars carved their names have grown over, but the marks are there. How like human life! The wounds we make only partially heal. Even the brook where the boys and girls drank and fished, and built dams and saw-mills, once quite a river in their eyes, has become beautifully less. In the soul's picturegallery is the portrait of all the boys and girls we knew; of all the hills, streams, fields, beasts, birds; of dewy eves and morns; of the stars we chose to rule our destiny; of first dreams, and first lessons of friendship.

A child never loves duties. When the genius of children is better understood, and we employ the love-art of the mother-bird, that, by example, woos her fledgling up into the sky, whippings will be at an end. "Jimmie's tricks," so innocent, so tormenting, were full of morality. They made the school healthy. When five or six years old, his uncle, Dr. Peebles, taught with ferule in hand, a birch-stick on the desk! Almost every day he got a flogging for his pranks: every mishap charged against him. He bore it like a Christian martyr, however, never exposing a secret, unconquerable in his submis

sion. The fighting boys appealed to him for umpire. He was the defender of the weaker party always.

"I help the under dog in the fight."

Being an inveterate stutterer, he could not, or would not, read loud. His temper was kept sharp by the grinding taunts of the "big boys," ever laughing at his awkward articulation. In righteous indignation, he wished a hundred times there were never a school in the world. Justly did he hate the hard-backed bench, so high that his feet hung dangling for hours without rest. Glad we do not have to live but once those flogging, aching, rambling days of auld lang syne.

The next summer, Elizabeth Godfrey taught. One day, she sent him with a little tin pail after some water. The path led by Azuba Martin's garden (mother of Dr. O. Martin, a prominent physician of Worcester, Mass.). As he peeped through the fence, his palate could not resist the delicious currants, then red ripe. That little hand again and again plucked the "forbidden fruit" the first Adamic sin! In vain did he try to wash off the stains that betrayed him. Oh, the agony! Entering the schoolhouse, he demurely went to his seat; when the teacher, noticing his embarrassment, called him up. "What is the matter with your hand, Jimmie?”

"What! currant juice! Been stealing? Now, you go right straight to ‘Aunt Zuba,' and confess you stole her currants!

Exposed before the whole school as a "little thief," what a trying moment! Snail-like, he dragged his heavy feet back to Mrs. Martin's, just the most humble and self-blaming lad, part mad, much ashamed, half-crying. Aunt Zuba caught sight of him, as he entered the gate, and, greeting him with a smile, seeing his sadness, said very patronly,

"What, my little man, come after more water a-ready?

"S-s-sch-school-ma'am t-t-old me t-to come, and-and tell you II-I-st-stole your currants; and I-I-am sor-s-sor-sorry !"

"Why! come here, my darling. Were you hungry? We have of currants plenty to eat. You should not steal, dear boy; but, when you want any more, come and ask me, and you shall have all you wish."