the coarsest kind and
ending with the finest kind; and each of the wrappers was fastened with
its own particular bit of cord or ribbon, all of them tied in the
hardest of hard knots. The process of disentanglement was long and
laborious, but it was persistently performed; and when the brick was
revealed, lo! it was just a brick--not of maple sugar, but a plain,
ordinary, red-clay, building brick which he had taken from some pile of
similar bricks on his way up town. The disappointment was not very
bitter, for The Boy knew that something else was coming; and he realized
that it was the First of April and that he had been April-fooled! The
something else, he remembers, was that most amusing of all amusing
books, _Phoenixiana_, then just published, and over it he forgot his
toothache, but not his maple sugar. All this happened when he was about
twelve years of age, and he has ever since associated "Squibob" with the
sweet sap of the maple, never with raging teeth.

It was necessary, however, to get even with the father, not an easy
matter, as The Boy well knew; and he consulted his uncle John, who
advised patient waiting. The father, he said, was absolutely devoted to
_The Commercial Advertiser_, which he read every day from frontispiece
to end, market reports, book notices, obituary notices, advertisements,
and all; and if The Boy could hold himself in for a whole year his uncle
John thought it would be worth it. _The Commercial Advertiser_ of that
date was put safely away for a twelvemonth, and on the First of April
next it was produced, carefully folded and properly dampened, and was
placed by the side of the father's plate; the mother and the son
making no remark, but eagerly awaiting the result. The journal was
vigorously scanned; no item of news or of business import was missed
until the reader came to the funeral announcements on the third page.
Then he looked at the top of the paper, through his spectacles, and then
he looked, over his spectacles, at The Boy; and he made but one
observation. The subject was never referred to afterwards between them.
But he looked at the date of the paper, and he looked at The Boy; and he
said: "My son, I see that old Dr. McPherson is dead again!"

[Illustration: THE BOY'S UNCLE JOHN]

The Boy was red-headed and long-nosed, even from the beginning--a shy,
introspective, self-conscious little boy, made peculiarly familiar with
his personal defects by constant remarks that his hai