ng
voraciously, he hid the remainder of his cake in the mortise of a beam
beside the back chamber stairs. On visiting it next morning for secret
indulgence, he found that the rats had enjoyed the wedding feast, too.
Nothing was left. His first toy watch was to him an event of vast
significance, and he slept with it under his pillow. When also he had
donned his first pair of trousers, he strutted like a turkey cock and
said, "I look just like a grand sir." Children in those days often
spoke of men advanced in years as "grand sirs."

The boy was ten years old when President Andrew Jackson visited
Concord. Everybody went to see "Old Hickory." In the yellow-bottomed
chaise, paterfamilias Coffin took his boy Carleton and his daughter
Elvira, the former having four pence ha'penny to spend. Federal
currency was not plentiful in those days, and the people still used
the old nomenclature, of pounds, shillings, and pence, which was
Teutonic even before it was English or American. Rejoicing in his
orange, his stick of candy, and his supply of seed cakes, young
Carleton, from the window of the old North Meeting House, saw the
military parade and the hero of New Orleans. With thin features and
white hair, Jackson sat superbly on a white horse, bowing right and
left to the multitude. Martin Van Buren was one of the party.

Another event, long to be remembered by a child who had never before
been out late at night, was when, with a party of boys seven or eight
in number, he went a-spearing on Great Pond. In the calm darkness they
walked around the pond down the brook to the falls. With a bright
jack-light, made of pitch-pine-knots, everything seemed strange and
exciting to the boy who was making his first acquaintance of the
wilderness world by night. His brother Enoch speared an eel that
weighed four pounds, and a pickerel of the same weight. The party did
not get home till 2 A. M., but the expedition was a glorious one and
long talked over. The only sad feature in this rich experience was in
his mother's worrying while her youngest child was away.

This was in April. On the 20th of August, just after sunset, in the
calm summer night, little Carleton looked into his mother's eyes for
the last time, and saw the heaving breast gradually become still. It
was the first great sorrow of his life.

CHAPTER III.

THE DAYS OF HOMESPUN.

Carleton's memories of school-days have little perhaps that is
uncommon. He remembers the t