. I may confess, however,
that in later years, when my fortune had bettered, I assumed those armes
parlantes, if only as a brave device wherewith to seal a letter. Anyway,
Crowninshield is my name, with Raphael prefixed, a name my mother fell
upon in conning her Bible for a holiname for me. So, if my arms are but
canting heraldry, I carry the name of an archangel to better them.

I was an only son, and my parents spoilt me. They had some fancy in
their heads that I was a weakling, and needed care, though I had the
strength of a colt and the health a sea-coast lad should have, so
they did not send me to a school. Yet, because they set a store by
book-learning--which may have its uses, though it never charmed me--I
had some schooling at home in reading, writing, and ciphering. My father
sought to instil into me an admiration for the dignity of trade, because
he wished me to become a merchant in time, with mayhap the Mayoralty in
perspective. I liked the shop when I was little, and thought it a famous
place to play in, lurking down behind its dark counter as in a robbers'
den, and seeing through the open door of the parlour at the back of the
shop my mother knitting at her window and the green trees of the garden.
I liked, too, the folds of sober cloth and coloured prints, and the
faces of folk when they came in to buy or cheapen. Even the jangle of
the bell that clattered at the shop door when we put it to at meal times
pleased my ears, and has sounded there many times since and softly in
places thousands of miles away from the Main Street. I do not know how
or why, but the cling-clang of that bell always stirred strange fancies
in my mind, and strange things appeared quite possible. Whenever the
bell went tinkle I began to wonder who it was outside, and whether by
chance they wanted me, and what they might want of me. But the caller
was never better than some neighbour, who needed a button or a needle.

The great event of my childhood was my father's gift to me of an
English version of Monsieur Galland's book, 'The Arabian Nights'
Entertainments.' Then the tinkle of the shop bell assumed a new
significance. Might not Haroun al Raschid himself, with Giafar, his
vizier, and Mesrour, his man, follow its cracked summons, or some
terrible withered creature whom I, and I only, knew to be a genie in
disguise, come in to catch me by the shoulder and sink with me through
the floor?

Those were delicious terrors. But what I most