ion
on me. I still possess a pictured tile from a chimney-piece of this old
mansion.

The house is gone, but it is endeared to me by a very strange memory.
When I was six or seven years of age, I had read Shakespeare's "Tempest,"
and duly reflected on it. The works of Shakespeare were very rare indeed
in Quaker Philadelphia in those days, and much tabooed, but Mr. Jones,
who had a good library in the great hall upstairs, possessed a set in
large folio. This I was allowed to read, but not to remove from the
place. How well I can remember passing my Saturday afternoons reading
those mighty tomes, standing first on one leg, then on the other for very
weariness, yet absorbed and fascinated!

About this time I was taken to the theatre to see Fannie Kemble in "Much
Ado About Nothing"--or it may have been to a play before that time--when
my father said to me that he supposed I had never heard of Shakespeare.
To which I replied by repeating all the songs in the "Tempest." One of
these, referring to the loves of certain sailors, is not very decent, but
I had not the remotest conception of its impropriety, and so proceeded to
repeat it. A saint of virtue must have laughed at such a declamation.

As it recurs to me, the spirit which was over Philadelphia in my boyhood,
houses, gardens, people, and their life, was strangely quiet, sunny, and
quaint, a dream of olden time drawn into modern days. The Quaker
predominated, and his memories were mostly in the past; ours, as I have
often said, was a city of great trees, which seemed to me to be ever
repeating their old poetic legends to the wind of Swedes, witches, and
Indians.

Among the street-cries and sounds, the first which I can remember was the
postman's horn, when I was hardly three years old. Then there were the
watchmen, "who cried the hour and weather all night long." Also a
coloured man who shouted, in a strange, musical strain which could be
heard a mile:

"_Tra-la-la-la-la-la-loo_.
Le-mon-ice-cream!
An'-wanilla-too!"

Also the quaint old Hominy-man:

"De Hominy man is on his way,
Frum de Navy-Yard!
Wid his harmony!"

(Spoken) "Law bess de putty eyes ob de young lady! Hominy's good fur
de young ladies!

"De Harmony man is on his way," &c.

Also, "Hot-corn!" "Pepper-pot!" "Be-au-ti-ful Clams!" with the "Sweep-
oh" cry, and charcoal and muffin bells.

One of the family legends was, that being asked by some lady, for