my childhood. That trick of throwing a stone at a tree
and attaching some mighty issue to hitting or missing, which you will find
mentioned in one or more biographies, I well remember. Stepping on or over
certain particular things or spots--Dr. Johnson's especial weakness--I got
the habit of at a very early age.--I won't swear that I have not some
tendency to these not wise practices even at this present date. [How many
of you that read these notes can say the same thing!]

With these follies mingled sweet delusions, which I loved so well I would
not outgrow them, even when it required a voluntary effort to put a
momentary trust in them. Here is one which I cannot help telling you.

The firing of the great guns at the Navy-yard is easily heard at the place
where I was born and lived. "There is a ship of war come in," they used to
say, when they heard them. Of course, I supposed that such vessels came in
unexpectedly, after indefinite years of absence,--suddenly as falling
stones; and that the great guns roared in their astonishment and delight
at the sight of the old warship splitting the bay with her cutwater. Now,
the sloop-of-war the Wasp, Captain Blakely, after gloriously capturing the
Reindeer and the Avon, had disappeared from the face of the ocean, and was
supposed to be lost. But there was no proof of it, and, of course, for a
time, hopes were entertained that she might be heard from. Long after the
last real chance had utterly vanished, I pleased myself with the fond
illusion that somewhere on the waste of waters she was still floating, and
there were _years_ during which I never heard the sound of the great guns
booming inland from the Navy-yard without saying to myself, "The Wasp has
come!" and almost thinking I could see her, as she rolled in, crumpling
the water before her, weather-beaten, barnacled, with shattered spars and
threadbare canvas, welcomed by the shouts and tears of thousands. This was
one of those dreams that I nursed and never told. Let me make a clean
breast of it now, and say, that, so late as to have outgrown childhood,
perhaps to have got far on towards manhood, when the roar of the cannon
has struck suddenly on my ear, I have started with a thrill of vague
expectation and tremulous delight, and the long-unspoken words have
articulated themselves in the mind's dumb whisper, _The Wasp has come!_

----Yes, children believe plenty of queer things. I suppose all of you
have had the pocket-bo