t the next time we went berrying, I
should try for the head of the procession; but the fun was too much for
me; I could not hold to my resolution above a half hour; I was
excessively fond of praise but averse to the ways of meriting it. The
only long word I brought away from childhood was approbativeness. I
never used the word, nor knew its meaning, and, least of all, could have
pronounced it. I heard it once only, together with another word, editor,
which I understood as little, from the lips of a travelling
phrenologist. It happened that my mother lodged and fed him for a night
and he paid his score by examining the heads of all the family. I was
greatly impressed when he remarked that I had a large bump of
approbativeness and would sometime be an editor. As to the bump, feeling
over my own head, I never could find it. My mother said it was inside
and that the phrenologist meant I must be a good boy. I was quite used
to that interpretation of everything concerning myself. A great many
years after, when I became editor of an obscure newspaper, so little
comfort, reputation or profit did I find in it, that I amused myself in
thinking of it as the fulfillment of the phrenologist's prophecy.

The Bacchic procession dropped its members here and there along the road
and we got to our own cottage tired, sunburnt and hungry. We ate our
suppers of berries and milk out of pewter porringers with pewter spoons
and went to bed at dark. The next day we fed on berry pies, and all the
neighborhood during the berry season bore the marks of pies in blackened
teeth and lips, except a few fastidious young women who cleaned theirs
with vinegar. Tooth brushes were as unknown as rouge and powder. Every
Saturday night the children were scrubbed in a wash tub in front of the
fire place in winter, and at the door in summer. During the session of
school my mother washed my ears and face every day, pinned my collar,
kissed me, and always her tedious parting injunction was, mind your
teacher, study your lesson and be a good boy. Then away with flying feet
I overtake my companions, whom no sooner met, than we loitered along the
road, hand in hand, or arms around another's neck, merry and playful,
quite unmindful of nine o'clock and the hateful lesson. There were no
precocious and wonderful children in our red school house. Even I did
not begin to write poetry until I was eighteen or nineteen! The only
literary prodigy among our neighbors was a maid