erely turned loose with a book in my hands,
gave me an advantage over my mates, I do not know, but when Roger came
back he found me only three classes below him and graduated from the
little boys' playground forever.

That summer he took me home with him and I gazed with deep respect
upon the portraits of his ancestors, fading against the dark wainscots
of the respectable Boston mansion; played my violin obediently for his
mother, who presented me with a volume of Emerson's essays; hung upon
the lips of his soldier-uncle, one-armed since Gettysburg, who in his
turn listened gravely to my tales of my father; and sedulously avoided
his cousin Sarah, who, even then, a fresh-faced girl of eighteen, had
begun to feel those responsibilities toward the human race which have
since so consistently distinguished her, and pursued me with hideous
bits of paper bearing a mocking resemblance to blank cheques, which
she called "pledges," by means of which she urged me to begin in the
days of my youth the practice of total abstinence, with the result
that she has become hopelessly involved in my mind with that revolting
practice. They were Unitarians, a doctrine then fashionable in those
regions, oddly enough, and greatly to the puzzlement of my dear
mother, who could not understand how dissent could ever be so, and who
was firmly convinced that "your Bradleys" as she called them, were
addicted to ranting prayers on all occasions. In vain I described to
her old Madam Bradley with a scrap of frosty lace on her white hair, a
terrifying ear trumpet and the manners of a countess; in vain I
assured her that Uncle Winthrop would no more be guilty of a ranting
prayer than my father would have been: she shook her head gently and
urged me to recall my confirmation vows!

My dear mother! To write of her even so slightly is to see her in her
neat black dress with its web-like bands of lawn at neck and wrists,
directing old Jeanne, _bonne-a-tout-faire_ now in our small
establishment, watering our window geraniums from a quaint, long-nosed
copper pot, drilling Mr. Boffin, the poodle, in his manners, and, when
the early dinner was out of the way, sitting in all simplicity with
Jeanne at work upon my shirts--the only example of really democratic
institutions that I ever saw in this irascible democracy. I should
like to have seen Madam Bradley sewing with the cook and innocently
gossiping over the old days!

Well, well, even to have invented so inh