ore of a penny those economical days than the poorest American
schoolboy thinks of a dollar. To decide what to do with that first
penny was an extravagantly serious affair. I ran in great excitement
up and down the street, examining the tempting goodies in the shop
windows before venturing on so important an investment. My playmates
also became excited when the wonderful news got abroad that Johnnie
Muir had a penny, hoping to obtain a taste of the orange, apple, or
candy it was likely to bring forth.

At this time infants were baptized and vaccinated a few days after
birth. I remember very well a fight with the doctor when my brother
David was vaccinated. This happened, I think, before I was sent to
school. I couldn't imagine what the doctor, a tall, severe-looking man
in black, was doing to my brother, but as mother, who was holding him
in her arms, offered no objection, I looked on quietly while he
scratched the arm until I saw blood. Then, unable to trust even my
mother, I managed to spring up high enough to grab and bite the
doctor's arm, yelling that I wasna gan to let him hurt my bonnie
brither, while to my utter astonishment mother and the doctor only
laughed at me. So far from complete at times is sympathy between
parents and children, and so much like wild beasts are baby boys,
little fighting, biting, climbing pagans.

Father was proud of his garden and seemed always to be trying to make
it as much like Eden as possible, and in a corner of it he gave each
of us a little bit of ground for our very own in which we planted what
we best liked, wondering how the hard dry seeds could change into soft
leaves and flowers and find their way out to the light; and, to see
how they were coming on, we used to dig up the larger ones, such as
peas and beans, every day. My aunt had a corner assigned to her in our
garden which she filled with lilies, and we all looked with the utmost
respect and admiration at that precious lily-bed and wondered whether
when we grew up we should ever be rich enough to own one anything like
so grand. We imagined that each lily was worth an enormous sum of
money and never dared to touch a single leaf or petal of them. We
really stood in awe of them. Far, far was I then from the wild lily
gardens of California that I was destined to see in their glory.

When I was a little boy at Mungo Siddons's school a flower-show was
held in Dunbar, and I saw a number of the exhibitors carrying large
handfu