I suspect nothing better than a
very wretched smattering is to be obtained in these country academies.
Mr. Jerkins, an instructor at Amherst, speaking of the Western mounds,
expressed an opinion that they were of the same nature and origin as some
small circular hills which are of very frequent occurrence here in North
Adams. The burial-ground is on one of them, and there is another, on the
summit of which appears a single tombstone, as if there were something
natural in making these hills the repositories of the dead. A question
of old H------ led to Mr. Jenkins's dissertation on this subject, to the
great contentment of a large circle round the bar-room fireside on the
last rainy day.
A tailor is detected by Mr. Leach, because his coat had not a single
wrinkle in it. I saw him exhibiting patterns of fashions to Randall, the
village tailor. Mr. Leach has much tact in finding out the professions
of people. He found out a blacksmith, because his right hand was much
larger than the other.
A man getting subscriptions for a religious and abolition newspaper in
New York,--somewhat elderly and gray-haired, quick in his movements,
hasty in his walk, with an eager, earnest stare through his spectacles,
hurrying about with a pocket-book of subscriptions in his hand,--seldom
speaking, and then in brief expressions,--sitting down before the stage
comes, to write a list of subscribers obtained to his employers in New
York.
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