h, and so George's joke brought him a cuff
on the ear in the interests of pure religion and undefiled. A couple of
generations back there was a strain of right valiant heroic Peabody
blood.

Among the "Green Mountain Boys" there was a Peabody, and another Peabody
was captain of a packet that sailed out of Boston for London. To run
away and join this uncle as cabin-boy was George's first ambition.

People in the country may be poor, but in America such never suffer for
food. If hunger threatens, the children can skirmish among the
neighbors. The village of Danvers was separated by only a mile or so of
swale and swamp from Salem, a place that once rivaled Boston
commercially, and in matters of black cats, and elderly women who
aviated on broomsticks by night, set the world a pace. Fish, clams,
water-lilies, berries, eels, and other such flora and fauna were
plentiful, and became objects of merchandising for the Peabody boys,
bare of foot and filled with high emprise.

Parents often bestow upon their progeny the qualities which they
themselves do not possess, so wonderful is this law of heredity.

George was the youngest boy in the brood, and was looked after by his
"other mother," that is to say, by an elder sister. When this sister
married, the boy was eleven years old. To the lad this marriage was more
like a funeral. He could read and write and count to a hundred, having
gone to school for several months each Winter since he was seven. He
could write better than his father or mother--he wrote like copperplate,
turning his head on one side and chewing his tongue, keeping pace with
his lips, as the pen glided gracefully over the paper. His ambition was
to make a bird with a card in its bill, and on this card, written so
small no one could read it, the proud name, G. Peabody.

This ability to write brought him local fame, and Sylvester Proctor, who
kept a general store in the village, offered to take him on a four
years' apprenticeship and teach him the trade of green grocer and dealer
in W. I. Goods. The papers were duly made out and signed, the boy being
consulted afterward. What the consideration was, was not stated, but
rumor has it that the elder Peabody was paid twenty-five dollars in
"W. I. Goods" and also wet goods.

Proctor was a typical New England merchant of the Class B type. He was
up at daylight, shaved his upper lip, and swept off the sidewalk in
front of his store. At night he put up the shutters wit