WHO THEY WERE. 21

them, and in each unoccupied hand a travelling-bag, saying they wanted
to bid mother good-bye before starting to find the sunrise!

That settled the matter, and in a few days, it was decided that
they might accompany Uncle Nat on his trip.

“We must go to grandpa’s first,” said Rick.

Dear old grandpa! Like a stream coming down from a mountain-
top and watering many fields, is the influence of loving grandparents
over the generations below them. Grandpa Rogers lived in a house
approached by one of the prettiest, and most leafy walks of summer.
The trees were bare now, but the home itself was lke an old oak
covered with the foliage of many tender and beautiful associations.

When grandpa had been visited, Uncle Nat and his nephews left
New England.

The trip to California was made, and a visit also to some California
friends, the Peters. The Peters were sorry to have their Hastern
visitors leave, and the boys’ departure was especially regretted by a
colored youth on the premises, Josiah, or Siah, as he was generally
called. Siah was a stout, black boy caught up by the wave of some
colored exodus from the South, and carried West by it. He had no
father or mother, but had left an old aunty behind who sent after
him the prayers she could not personally follow. She sent also her
most dearly prized earthly treasure, a little pocket Bible. Asking
her minister to pick out passages appropriate to a young person,
she then drew with her own hand a big pencil-mark about them.
They were admonitions after this style: “My son, if sinners entice thee,
consent thou not.”

As Siah could not read, he did not know just what precious stones
might be in these caskets, but their nature in general, he understood,
that it was “something bery good fur young folks,’ and it had its
influence. Certain stains, too, he knew were aunty’s tear-marks, and