several times.
He pretended to be so surprised, and said, "Oh, you little witch!" It
was a day on which you had need to keep your wits about you.

Then with the long days and the sunshine came so many things. Little
girls skipped rope and rolled hoops, their guiding-sticks tied with a
bright ribbon. The boys had iron hoops and an iron guider, and they made
a musical jingle as they went along. There were kites too, but you
didn't catch Benny Frank flying one. And marbles and ball. In the
afternoon the streets seemed alive with children. But what would those
people have said to the five-story tenement-houses with their motley
crew! Then Ludlow and Allen and many another street wore such a clean
and quaint aspect, and the ladies sat at their parlor windows in the
afternoon sewing and watching their little ones.

"Ring-a-round-a-rosy" began again. And dear me, there were so many
signs! You must not step on a crack in the flagging or something
dreadful would happen to you. And you mustn't pick up a pin with the
point toward you or you would surely be disappointed. If the head was
toward you, you could pick it up and make a wish which would be sure to
come to pass. You must cut your finger-nails Monday morning before
breakfast and you would get a present before the week was out. And if
you walked straight to school that morning you were likely to have good
lessons, but if you loitered or stopped to play or were late, bad luck
would follow you all the week. And the little girls used to say:

"Lesson, lesson, come to me,
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, three,
Thursday, Friday, then you may
Have a rest on Saturday,"

So you see a little girl's life was quite a weighty matter.

That summer political excitement ran high. Indeed, it had begun in the
winter. A new party had nominated Mr. James Harper for mayor, and in
the spring he had been elected. Mr. Theodore used to pause and discuss
men and measures now that it was getting warm enough to sit out on the
stoop and read your paper. Country habits were not altogether tabooed.
But what impressed his honor the mayor most strongly on the little
girl's mind was something Aunt Nancy Archer, who was now an earnest
Methodist, said when she was up to tea one evening.

"I did look to see Brother Harper set up a little. It's only natural,
you know, and I can't quite believe in perfection. But there he was in
class-meeting, not a mite changed, just as friendly and earnest