f
the journey there and back in the chaise, the wild scenery and the
strange sound of the surf, the old dark house and the devoted black
servants--sometimes, I say, as I thought of all these, as I loved to do
when I settled myself in bed for the night, or when in summer I lay on
my back in the grass looking up at the flying clouds, I would have to
stop and fix my attention sharp, to be sure whether it ever had been a
reality, or whether it might not be, after all, only a dream. I think
my father was afraid of the fascination of the cape for us boys--afraid
its charms, if we once partook of them freely, might distract our
attention from the order and duties of school life. To be sure, we
always went to the country with our parents for a month or six weeks,
and enjoyed it exceedingly, laying up a stock of trout, squirrel, and
badger stories to last us through the winter. But there was no other
country, we imagined, like the cape; and as our father and mother never
lived there, and rarely spent even a single night on the whole property,
they thought it best, I suppose, that we should not run wild there and
get a relish for what all boys seem to have, in some degree, by nature.
I mean the spirit of adventure, and love of the sea.

However, the good time came at last, or a reliable promise of it first,
just fifty years ago this very February. We older boys--Walter, sixteen
years of age, Drake, fourteen, and I, Robert, twelve--were attending
school at Bristol, and were, as usual too in the winter evenings, at
work over our lessons at the library table, when, on one
never-to-be-forgotten evening, our father, who was sitting in an easy
chair by the fire, suddenly asked, "Boys, how would you like to pass
next summer on the cape?" Ah! didn't we three give a terrific chorus of
assent? "Jolly! magnificent! splendid!" we cried, while Walter just
quietly vaulted over half a dozen chairs, two or three at a time,
backwards and forwards, till he had expended some of the animal vivacity
stored up in abundance within him. Drake, as usual when extremely
pleased, tried to accomplish the rubbing of his stomach and the patting
of his head both at the same time; and I climbed into the chair with my
father, and patted his cheeks and thanked him with a fierce shake of the
hands.

"Bob, boy, you are the only one of my youngsters who has been at the old
place, and you must have painted it as a wonderful corner of the earth,
that Walter an