ment of joy.

Occasionally Fourth of July was celebrated in military fashion; the
train-band marched to the music of drum and fife accompanied by a
procession of urchins. The crowning exercise was the firing of a salute
by the whole company. It made every boy wish to be a soldier as soon as
possible. Then the muskets were stacked under a great elm tree from a
limb of which swung the sign, "E. Thayer, Inn" and we all took a free
drink, in consideration of the dinner which was to follow at a shilling
a head.

The more common observance of the day was of a much milder character,
Sunday-school picnics, in which the churches of towns near each other
united. We went to Mendon, and next year Mendon came to us. These
picnics consisted of a little religion, much lemonade and cake, followed
next day by headache. The day ended with a thunderstorm when the picnic
was in Mendon; such was the common saying. Thunder storms in the night
were the dread of my mother's household, especially on the Fourth of
July when already excited by the day's events. We invariably expected
the end of the world so much prophesied by neighbor White. If the storm
came on in the daytime the whole family went to bed and covered up their
heads. For my part, I longed to be out of doors in the rain, and enjoyed
nothing so much as the drops falling on my bare head, and in splashing
about through the puddles with bare feet. I was exhilarated by the sound
of thunder, but lightning terrified me and seemed to throw me down. It
was in an August thunderstorm that my father lost his life in an attempt
to save his shocks of rye from ruin, which was indeed the end of the
world for his family. It was no wonder that my mother and sisters were
alarmed when the black clouds and sultry air came over the Mendon hills.
I was too young to heed the menace or to be reminded of the domestic
catastrophe and sorrow. Nature, rain or shine, winter or summer, river,
pasture, clouds, woods, flowers, berries, apples, birds, were my
playthings from which I was learning to find the images and equivalents
in myself. Lying on my back and watching the summer clouds race across
the sky gave me my first comparison and attachment of a natural object
to a conscious mental conception. I arrested those clouds in their
flight across the blue, and whether they went sailing on or sank below
the horizon I still saw them, and their images remained firmly fixed in
my mind.

It was a rare chance when I