yself inveterately renew it I seem to
infer from the memory of other perambulations of the period--as to which
I am divided between their still present freshness and my sense of
perhaps making too much of these tiny particles of history. My stronger
rule, however, I confess, and the one by which I must here consistently
be guided, is that, from the moment it is a question of projecting a
picture, no particle that counts for memory or is appreciable to the
spirit _can_ be too tiny, and that experience, in the name of which one
speaks, is all compact of them and shining with them. There was at any
rate another way home, with other appeals, which consisted of getting
straight along westward to Broadway, a sphere of a different order of
fascination and bristling, as I seem to recall, with more vivid aspects,
greater curiosities and wonderments. _The_ curiosity was of course the
country-place, as I supposed it to be, on the northeast corner of
Eighteenth Street, if I am not mistaken; a big brown house in "grounds"
peopled with animal life, which, little as its site may appear to know
it to-day, lingered on into considerably later years. I have but to
close my eyes in order to open them inwardly again, while I lean against
the tall brown iron rails and peer through, to a romantic view of
browsing and pecking and parading creatures, not numerous, but all of
distinguished appearance: two or three elegant little cows of refined
form and colour, two or three nibbling fawns and a larger company, above
all, of peacocks and guineafowl, with, doubtless--though as to this I am
vague--some of the commoner ornaments of the barnyard. I recognise that
the scene as I evoke it fails of grandeur; but it none the less had for
me the note of greatness--all of which but shows of course what a very
town-bred small person I was, and was to remain.

I see myself moreover as somehow always alone in these and like New York
_flaneries_ and contemplations, and feel how the sense of my being so,
being at any rate master of my short steps, such as they were, through
all the beguiling streets, was probably the very savour of each of my
chance feasts. Which stirs in me at the same time some wonder at the
liberty of range and opportunity of adventure allowed to my tender age;
though the puzzle may very well drop, after all, as I ruefully reflect
that I couldn't have been judged at home reckless or adventurous. What I
look back to as my infant license can on