Mr. Swan never made a truer remark than this last.  The primitive inhabitants of Waveland, although they gossipped about each other, and speculated a little beyond the bounds of politeness and decorum, in regard to the affairs of the few strangers, who now and then appeared among them, were, on the whole, a kind-hearted, sober, industrious community.  The little village possessed two stores, a hotel, blacksmith shop, a school house in which religious services were also held, and a post office, presided over, in an official capacity, by the village doctor.

There was also a weekly paper published there, by an ambitious youth, called the “Clarion,” which contained snappish editorials about its neighbors, aspiring criticisms upon the publications of different authors, always ending in an unmistakable “puff,” if they were at all popular, or a feeble attempt at discriminating censure, if the unlucky scribe was unknown to fame, and had (poor wretch,) his way yet to make in the literary world.

Clemence got quite attached to the Swans’ during her brief stay with them.  She regretted to leave them for the uncongenial society of strangers.

Her next boarding place was at Dr. Little’s.  He was rightly named, Mrs. Wynn had taken pains to inform her, and they were a well-matched pair.

“The way that man charged, when my Rose had the fever and chills, was amazin’.  I know one thing, there would be a good opening in Waveland for any single young man who wanted to set up opposition to the old Doctor.  For my part, I’d call on him every time my family needed his services, which would probably be pretty often, for Rose is kind of delicate like.  He’d be sure to have one patron, for it would do me good to spite the Little’s.”

Clemence thought, when she first saw this couple, about whom she had heard so much, that though the little weazen-faced Doctor might chance to be rightly named, yet the same remark could not, by any means, apply to the mountain of flesh he called his wife.

“Oh, but you don’t know her,” said Maria, their one servant, after tea.  “I always thought, before I came here, that fat people, especially them that had plenty of means, sort of took life easy.  But I’ve changed my mind, since I knew Mis’ Little.  I’ve been in her service risin’ of five years, and you might as well think of catching a weasel asleep.  It’s ‘Mariar,’ the last thing at night, and ‘Mariar,’ the first thing in the morning.  I don’t know when she rests, for she never lays down while I am awake, for fear I shant do just so much.  If them there philysophers, that want to find out the secret of perpetual motion, and can’t, would come across Mis’ Little, they’d own beat.  She’s just kept a spinning for the last five years.  And Sundays she’s more regular to church than the minister himself, besides all the weekly meetings, and always gets up and tells what the Lord’s done for her soul.  Then the Doctor he follows, and talks about