calamus, a little brown ball was sure to be
seen moving, now dipping out of sight, now rising again, like a bit of
drift on the rippling green. It was my head. The treasures I there
collected were black terrapins with orange spots, baby frogs the size
of a chestnut, thrush's eggs, and stems of purple phlox."

He loved his home with a passionate intensity; but he also had
yearnings for the unknown world beyond the horizon. "I remember," says
he, "as distinctly as if it were yesterday the first time this passion
was gratified. Looking out of the garret window, on a bright May
morning, I discovered a row of slats which had been nailed over the
shingles for the convenience of the carpenters in roofing the house,
and had not been removed. Here was, at least, a chance to reach the
comb of the steep roof, and take my first look abroad into the world!
Not without some trepidation I ventured out, and was soon seated
astride of the sharp ridge. Unknown forests, new fields and houses,
appeared to my triumphant view. The prospect, though it did not extend
more than four miles in any direction, was boundless. Away in the
northwest, glimmering through the trees, was a white object, probably
the front of a distant barn; but I shouted to the astonished servant
girl, who had just discovered me from the garden below, 'I see the
Falls of Niagara!'"

He was a sensitive child and had a horror of dirty hands, "and," says
he, "my first employments--picking stones and weeding corn--were
rather a torture to this superfine taste." In his mother, however, he
had a friend who understood and protected him. So his life on the farm
was as happy as it well could be, in spite of its roughness. He
himself has described it with a zest which no one else could lend it.
"Almost every field had its walnut tree, melons were planted among the
corn, and the meadow which lay between never exhausted its store of
wonders. Besides, there were eggs to hide at Easter; cherries and
strawberries in May; fruit all summer; fishing parties by torchlight;
lobelia and sumac to be gathered, dried and sold for pocket money; and
in the fall, chestnuts, persimmons, wild grapes, cider, and the grand
butchering after frost came, so that all the pleasures I knew were
incidental to a farmer's life. The books I read came from the village
library, and the task of helping to 'fodder' on the dark winter
evenings was lightened by the anticipation of sitting down to
'Gibbon's Rome' or