ction. No robin sings
against my window of a morning here--only the noisy sparrows twitter
and quarrel, reminding me of the curb market. No lilac sheds its
perfume on the still air. I am perforce reduced to peppermints. The
taste of peppermints on my tongue, the pungent fragrance of them in my
nostrils, have the power, however, to transport me far from this maze
of mortared canyons, back across the years, to a land where the robins
sang against the spacious sky and a little boy dreamed great dreams.

So now I am sitting high up above the Square, with my little bag of
peppermints before me (somewhat diminished in quantity already), and
think, between slow, sipping nibbles, of that little boy.

In his day, in the land where he came from, peppermints were almost a
symbol of life's best things--of grandmothers and other dear old
ladies who kept cookies in cool stone crocks in sweet-smelling
"butt'ries" (sometimes foolishly called pantries by those who put on
airs); of Christmastides when to the joy of peppermint sticks was
added the unspeakable delight of sucking barley toys,--red dogs,
golden camels that lost their humps and elephants that lost their
trunks as the tongue went succulently 'round and 'round them; of the
wonderful village "notion" store, presided over by a terrible female
person with a deep bass voice, who asked you over the counter as you
entered, "Which side, young man?" It was bad enough to be called
"Bubbie", but to be called "young man" in this ironic bass was almost
insufferable. Yet you bore it nobly, for the sake of the pound of shot
for your air-gun or the blood-alley or the great pink and white
peppermints, two for a cent, that reposed in a glass jar on the left
side of the shop. Was Miss Emily so terrible a person, I wonder now?
She was always looked upon a little askance by the ladies of our
village because she was "so masculine". But if she did not conceal a
softness for children under her stern exterior why did she keep a
stock of so many things dear to the childish heart, from paper
soldiers (purchased by the yard) to sleds and shot? Perhaps that
fantastic stock of hers was her curious expression of the Eternal
Motherly. After she died, every year on the 30th of May the
"Vet'rans," as they marched two by two in annually dwindling lines
about the cemetery, placed a fresh print flag and a basket of
geraniums on her grave, because she had sent a substitute to the War.
To us youngsters this subst