father in
Boston took me to see a marvellous white shell from China, valued at one
hundred pounds. What was the amazement of all present to hear me give
its correct Latin name, and relate a touching tale of a sailor who,
finding such a shell when shipwrecked on a desert island, took it home
with him, "and was thereby raised (as I told them) from poverty to
affluence." Which tale I had read the week before in a children's
magazine, and, as usual, reflected deeply on it, resolving to keep my eye
on all shells in future, in the hope of something turning up.

I was _not_, however, a little prig who bored people with my reading, for
I have heard old folk say that there was a quaint _naivete_ and droll
seriousness, and total unconsciousness of superior information in my
manner, which made these outpourings of mine very amusing. I think I was
a kind of little Paul Dombey, unconsciously odd, and perhaps innocently
Quaker-like. I could never understand why Aunt Nancy, and many more,
seemed to be so much amused at serious and learned examples and questions
which I laid down to them. For though they did not "smile outright," I
had learned to penetrate the New England ironical glance and satirical
intonation. My mother said that, when younger, I, having had a
difficulty of some kind with certain street-boys, came into the house
with my eyes filled with tears, and said, "I told them that they were
evil-minded, but they laughed me to scorn." On another occasion, when
some vagabond street-boys asked me to play with them, I gravely declined,
on the ground that I must "Shun bad company"--this phrase being the title
of a tract which I had read, and the boys corresponding in appearance to
a picture of sundry young ragamuffins on its title-page.

My portrait had been admirably painted in Philadelphia by Mrs. Darley,
the daughter of Sully, who, I believe, put the finishing touches to it.
When Mr. Walker saw it, he remarked that it looked exactly as if Charley
were just about to tell one of his stories. At the time I was reading
for the first time "The Child's Own Book," an admirable large collection
of fairy-tales and strange adventures, which kept me in fairy-land many a
time while I lay confined to bed for weeks with pleurisies and a great
variety of afflictions, for in this respect I suffered far more than most
children.

AT SCHOOL IN NEW ENGLAND.

Mr. Charles W. Greene was a portly, ruddy, elderly Boston gentleman of
g