act
in my consciousness that my father really loved me as I loved him. He
was not at all a demonstrative man, and any petting that he gave us
children could not fail to make a permanent impression.

I think that must have been also the last special attention I received
from him, for a little sister appeared soon after, whose coming was
announced to me with the accompaniment of certain mysterious hints
about my nose being out of joint. I examined that feature carefully in
the looking glass, but could not discover anything usual about it. It
was quite beyond me to imagine that our innocent little baby could have
anything to do with the possible disfigurement of my face, but she did
absorb the fondness of the whole family, myself included, and she
became my father's playmate and darling, the very apple of his eye. I
used sometimes to wish I were a baby too, so that he would notice me,
but gradually I accepted the situation.

Aunt Hannah used her kitchen or her sitting room for a schoolroom, as
best suited her convenience. We were delighted observers of her
culinary operations and other employments. If a baby's head nodded, a
little bed was made for it on a soft "comforter" in the corner, where
it had its nap out undisturbed. But this did not often happen; there
were so many interesting things going on that we seldom became sleepy.

Aunt Hannah was very kind and motherly, but she kept us in fear of her
ferule, which indicated to us a possibility of smarting palms. This
ferule was shaped much like the stick with which she stirred her hasty
pudding for dinner,--I thought it was the same,--and I found myself
caught in a whirlwind of family laughter by reporting at home that
"Aunt Hannah punished the scholars with the pudding-stick."

There was one colored boy in school, who did not sit on a bench, like
the rest, but on a block of wood that looked like a backlog turned
endwise. Aunt Hannah often called him a "blockhead," and I supposed it
was because he sat on that block. Sometimes, in his absence, a boy was
made to sit in his place for punishment, for being a "blockhead" too,
as I imagined. I hoped I should never be put there. Stupid little girls
received a different treatment,--an occasional rap on the head with the
teacher's thimble; accompanied with a half-whispered, impatient
ejaculation, which sounded very much like "Numskull!" I think this was
a rare occurrence, however, for she was a good-natured, much-enduring
woma