veless waters of
the Charles river, its whispering ripples scarcely reaching the shores
and making no impression upon it. But on my ear they sounded like words
interjected with soft laughter. There I made acquaintance with the
earth, the waters, the shadows of the sky, trying often to sink my hook
to the edge of a cloud. It was not in the heavens that I first noticed
the stars, but their trembling images in water.

Thus by the humble and narrow environment of my childhood was it made
doubly dear to me; the very limitations themselves enforcing and
promoting the growth of wonder and healthy imagination. It is this which
has kept alive my early memories and made them pleasant and suggestive
throughout my life. Nor do I think my experiences peculiar. Sir Henry
Wotton in the last years of his life happily expressed the feeling
common to men. "Seeing that very place where I sat when I was a boy
occasioned me to remember those very thoughts of my youth which then
possessed me; sweet thoughts indeed, that promised my growing years
numerous pleasures without mixture of cares; and those to be enjoyed
when time, which I therefore thought slow-paced had changed my youth
into manhood".

As I have already said unchangeableness is the characteristic of
Bellingham, and I repeat it, that I may add that it is the counterpart
of something in myself. I have been swept on with my race and my time
and while sharing all their tendencies, at heart what I value most, that
which is most native and dearest to me is the simple undisturbed life,
full of friendliness, piety and humble amusements into which I was born.
What this life was, as reflected in a happy childhood, a neglected youth
and idealised by its irrecoverable loss the following pages attempt to
portray.

THE WALLS OF THE WORLD

A one-storied house was lofty and convenient enough in a land where God
had planted a community of his common people. That was the height of the
temple of the Greeks, which was only the enlarged form of the hut or the
house of their Pelasgian ancestors. It was built low in due reverence to
its origin and to their gods. No other architecture has ever surpassed
its beauty and sublimity. The earth is ours to build upon and over, nor
much above. The early New England farmhouse was as beautiful in its
place as the Greek temple. Sometimes it was set directly on the highway;
sometimes in the middle of a field or on the side of rising ground, and
not infr