Note 5 — II AMESBURY

This is how it happened: Mr. Downey saw a newspaper item to the effect that Mrs. S. F. Smith was a classmate of Whittier's. He knew that his wife was a classmate of Mrs. Smith, and "put this and that together." Without saying anything to her about it, he sent a tract of his to Whittier, and with it a note about his work as an evangelist; in a postscript he said, "Did you ever know Evelina Bray?" Whittier wrote a criticism of the tract, which was against Colonel Ingersoll, in which he said, "It occurs to me to say that in thy tract there is hardly enough charity for that unfortunate man, who, it seems to me, is much to be pitied for his darkness of unbelief." He added as a postscript, "What does thee know about Evelina Bray?" Downey replied that she was his wife, but did not let her know of this correspondence, or of his receipt of money from her old schoolmate. He was not poor, only eccentric.