THE BELIEVING YEARS

THE BELIEVING YEARSTHE MACMILLAN COMPANYNEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGOSAN FRANCISCOMACMILLAN & CO., LimitedLONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTAMELBOURNETHE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.TORONTOTHE BELIEVING YEARSBYEDMUND LESTER PEARSONNew YorkTHE MACMILLAN COMPANY1911All rights reservedCopyright, 1910,By THE OUTLOOK COMPANY.Copyright, 1911,By THE OUTLOOK COMPANY.Copyright, 1911,By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1911.Norwood PressJ. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.ToEDMUND CARLTON PEARSON(1841-1897)"E'en as he trod that day to God so walked he from his birth,In simpleness and gentleness and honor and clean mirth."NOTEA number of the incidents described in this book have been used in a series of stories published inThe Outlook. To The Outlook Company my thanks are due for their courteous permission to retell these stories in an altered form.E. L. P.CONTENTSCHAPTERPAGEI.Mr. Colburn1II.The Old Town12III.Magic26IV.Napoleon Jones40V.A Run on the Bank57VI.Horace71VII.The Great Day82VIII.The Green Chest98IX.White Peacocks113X.The Flight130XI.Up Like a Rocket147XII.Susy160XIII.Arma Puerumque Cano177XIV.When My Ship Comes In195XV.The Lucky-Bug209XVI.West Injy Lane223XVII.Their Unaccountable Behavior240XVIII.The Siege of Auntie Merrill256XIX.Entertaining Alice269XX.While the Evil Days Come Not282THE BELIEVING YEARSCHAPTER IMR. COLBURNEach boy in the school-room had fixed his mind on two objects: the calendar and the clock. On the former stood out in big black charactersJune20The clock pointed to the hour of three. Exactly sixty minutes separated us from vacation. It was the day of our dreams,—the last day of school.We had thought of it, thought of it far back when snow still covered the ground; planned for it, lived in hope of it. To-morrow the tyrannical bell should besilent, and no one could say: "Time to start for school!"Many forces had been at work hurrying this day forward: the first blades of grass, the first leaves on the horse-chestnut trees, the first robin who ran across the grass-plots overlooking the frog pond, the first dandelion that gleamed in the grass. All were signs and symbols of it.But in spite of so many omens, the day itself had been outrageously slow to arrive. The robins had abated the enthusiasm of the first few weeks, and become quieter. They were sober householders and family men, now. The golden blossoms of the dandelions were transformed into that shape in which they are useful chiefly to blow upon three times to see at what o'clock your mother wants you. The season had arrived for swimming,—indeed, it had been here for weeks,—Ed Mason and Rob Currier claimed tohave gone in swimming at Four Rocks as early as the last day of April. The fish in Little River needed our careful attention. And in front of Austin's shop had long stood a sign displaying a pink pyramid with a spoon stuck therein, and the seductive words "Ice Cream," a spectacle that made our Fourth of July money stir uneasily in our pockets.In short, all the elements of vacation were here,—all but the thing itself. Each morning the summons came at twenty minutes of nine, and each morning we trod the dismal path. Pencils squeaked, and slaty smells arose as the slates were covered with figures and then cleaned with damp sponges. The pungent odor of cedar, from newly sharpened lead-pencils, mingled with the fragrance of pickled limes,—smuggled into school and eaten contrary to the orders of Miss Temple, the teacher. Outside, summercalled us in a dozen different ways. And, uneasy prisoners, we chafed and wriggled in our seats.But, somehow, the days had dragged by, and even this final one had nearly gone. At the last moment, when our release was so near at hand, a dismal spectre arose before us to block the way. It was the forbidding form of Mr. Colburn.This was a man who had written an arithmetic,—an arithmetic of singular and diabolical ingenuity. He had done this thing long before any of us were born, and then he had passed from the earth. But his work had remained to annoy us. Occasionally, during the last hour of the afternoon session, we wrestled with Mr. Colburn, by request. This was in addition to the regular arithmetic lesson in the morning.I conceived Mr. Colburn as a tall,spare man, clad in brown leather. His face was brown and leathery, too, and it was puckered and sour. In one hand he held his famous book,—in the other, a big switch. He was full of impertinent curiosity, was Mr. Colburn, and he had no manner of interest in the things that really concerned us.I wanted to know if Ed Mason (whose seat was next but one behind mine) were going fishing to-morrow morning. Mr. Colburn wanted to know if 3 fifths of a chaldron of coal cost 8 dollars, what is the whole chaldron worth?I did not care what it was worth, I did not know what a chaldron was, anyway,—and I have never found out. But I saw we were in for an uncomfortable hour as soon as Miss Temple said:"Take your Colburn's Arithmetics and sit up straight in your seats.... Robert, did you throw that? Well, you may goand stand in that corner, with your face to the wall."Rob Currier did as he was directed with undisguised delight. By one skilful stroke he had put himself beyond the clutch of Mr. Colburn. The rest of us looked upon him with envy,—if we had only been so inspired!It was base of Miss Temple to devote the last hour of school to Colburn's Arithmetic. We thought regretfully of another teacher we had once had. She would have read to us the adventures of "The Prince and the Pauper," and that was altogether better than fretting us about the price of coal. Never in my life have I wished to know the worth of a chaldron of coal, but if ever I have such a wish doubtless the dealer will tell me straight out.But that was not the way with the people Mr. Colburn knew,—they couldnever give you a decent answer about anything. If you asked one of Mr. Colburn's friends the price of his horse, he would reply that the horse and the saddle together were worth 100 dollars, but the horse was worth 9 times as much as the saddle,—and that was all you could get out of him.For my part, I privately resolved never to buy horses of any such disagreeable folk,—a resolution which I have faithfully kept.Miss Temple must have observed my anxiety to speak with Ed Mason, for she promptly called upon me:—"Samuel, you may take Question 61. Read it.""'A man bought 1 ton and 4 fifths of a ton of fustic for 43 dollars, what was that a ton?'"I struggled with it for a few moments, vaguely wondering what fustic might be,but in the end I was compelled to say that I did not know. Jimmy Toppan and Charley Carter both fell victims to the question. It was finally answered, with some help from Miss Temple, by Joe Carter. The answer did not seem very interesting to us, after it had been found and worked out on the blackboard.We were watching the clock.Mr. Colburn would not have cared for clocks,—unless, indeed, he could have made up some hateful question about them. He did not care for our fishing trips; he had no interest in the frog pond and its creatures. The warm, summer day outside had no attraction for him.He wanted to know if cloth 4 quarters wide is worth 8 dollars a yard, what is 1 yard of the same kind of cloth, that is 5 quarters wide, worth? And his conspirator, Miss Temple, aided and abetted him in his curiosity. She fired the questionsat us with unremitting vigor. We were called upon to reduce 9-4/7 to an improper fraction, though how any one could wish to inject into it any more impropriety than it already seemed to possess, was a matter impossible to understand.The long hour wore on. From outside came the drone of insects. A flock of sheep passed the school,—driven up Elm Street by men who were probably hurrying them to their fate. We tried to look out the windows and watch the progress of the sheep, but we were recalled by Miss Temple, to whom the incident suggested nothing except a chance to try upon us what Mr. Colburn seems to have considered his crowning effort."A man driving his geese to market was met by another, who said, Good morrow, master, with your hundred geese; says he, I have not a hundred; but if I had half as many more as I now have,and two geese and a half, I should have a hundred; how many had he?"Disheartening as this problem appeared, together with its inhuman suggestion of a man carrying half of a goose about with him, it nevertheless proved useful to us. Joe Carter and one or two others (who affected to enjoy Mr. Colburn) engaged in a long wrangle with each other and with Miss Temple, about the number of geese owned by this palpable lunatic. We regarded them, at first, with a pity not unmixed with loathing; then, as we observed how they were taking up the time, we came to appreciate the value of the discussion. Ed Mason and Jimmy Toppan, from the depths of a complete ignorance of the subject, managed to interject one or two inquiries that had the happy result of tangling every one up still worse, and thus prolonging the goose argument.To our great joy the problem was still unsolved at five minutes of four. Then Miss Temple was forced to bid us close the books. She made a few perfunctory remarks, wished us a pleasant vacation, and, when a gong sounded throughout the building, dismissed the class.We filed to get our hats, filed downstairs, through the hall, and out the door with a concerted and enthusiastic yell. Mr. Colburn and imprisonment lay behind us; ahead were vacation and freedom. So we whooped once more, and again, until a scissors-grinder, who had gone to sleep on the grass under a tree, woke up with a start. The old horse who drew Oliver's bakery wagon had been standing sleepily in front of a house on the other side of Elm Street. At our third shout he ambled clumsily off, while Mr. Oliver, with a basket of buns in his hand, pursued him down the street.CHAPTER IITHE OLD TOWNElm Street, into which we rushed that afternoon, was a broad thoroughfare extending from one end of the town to the other. On both sides it was lined with trees, set at the edge of the brick sidewalks. Mainly fine tall elms, they lent a distinction to the street and made it notable among those which characterize the older towns of New England. In the opinion of all the citizens, Elm Street was beyond comparison.Local pride did not exaggerate. Its unusual length, its great, graceful trees and the dignified houses, made the street undoubtedly beautiful. There were houses of every style which has been invogue during two hundred years. Roofs which sloped in the rear nearly to the ground, gambrel roofs, and the various less attractive fashions of the nineteenth century,—all were there.But those of which the owners were most proud, those best suited to the street, were the great, square, three-storied houses, built in the early years of the century. That was the time of the town's prosperity, before a fire had checked its growth, before shifting sands had almost closed its harbor. Ships from the old town sailed every ocean then, and carried our flag into strange, foreign ports. Their captains, or their owners, built many of the big, square houses, so you could often see, on the roof, a little railed platform, where the householder might stand of a morning to sweep the harbor and the ocean with his spy-glass. Charley Carter's father did this regularly,although the ships in which he was interested sailed to this port no longer, if, indeed, they sailed at all.The town was built along one bank of the river, and Elm Street followed the crest of the slope. It was an easy thing, therefore, for any one standing on the roof of one of the houses to get a good view of the river, the salt marshes, the sand-dunes, and the ocean. The ocean spread out there, bright and clear, from the dim blue mountain that rose on the far horizon in Maine, to the low hills of Cape Ann. Sometimes, at night, the east wind brought the rumble of breakers, or the booming sound of a whistling buoy that guarded the harbor.The town was long and very narrow. From Elm Street you could look down some of the cross streets to the river, and beyond. On the other side of Elm Street, as soon as you had passed the gardensthat lay behind the big houses, you were almost in open country. There were a few outlying farms, a few shanties, and then bare, scrubby fields, the Common Pasture, rocky knolls and clumps of woods. On one of these farms dwelt Mr. Diggery,—a fierce little man, of whom we went in terror.So near did the river come to the lower part of the town that a storm often made people who lived in that quarter need high boots to get across the street; while the country (unexplored wilds to us!) closed up so near on the other side of Elm Street, that owls, woodchucks, and an occasional fox penetrated the gardens.It was this nearness of the river and ocean, and of the open country, that made the town such a delightful dwelling-place for us. Even the centre of the town, the neighborhood where Ed Mason and Jimmy Toppan lived, and Rob Currier,the two Carters, Horace Winslow, Peter Bailey, and I,—this was a region thick with the possibilities of adventure. Much of this centred about the frog pond and the Mall. The pond was full of goldfish, and other humbler fish, and toads, frogs, and water-beetles. You were sure to find something interesting whenever you walked around the pond. Many of our neighbors on Elm Street owned large gardens, to which we had entrance—either by permission, or by the informal and far more adventurous method of climbing the back fence.The owners of the gardens, at that period, were mostly elderly persons, dwelling in great contentment and the most profound quiet. Their lives were comfortable, well-ordered, and precise. They lived mainly in the past. They pondered much on some grandfather, or great-grandfather, who had built up afortune through foreign trade, and they heeded not at all the remarks of envious and ill-natured folk who liked to point out that one of the chief commodities of this trade was rum. The principal hallmark of their respectability was a portrait of their ancestor, with very pink cheeks,—the sign of an outdoor life, and not necessarily an indication of a taste for port and madeira.Beside this venerable portrait would hang a lively representation of the shipSally B., as she appeared on some memorable occasion entering the harbor of Singapore, and viewed by one of those artists who invariably happen to be near by when the ship is under full sail and making not less than twelve knots.It was a period not so very far removed from our own time, and yet different from it in a number of respects. No thumping, grinding trolley car disturbed thequiet of Elm Street that bright June afternoon. Infrequently, an omnibus rambled up and down. By night the darkness was punctuated here and there by a gas flame at the top of an iron lamp post. Rob Currier's big brother Dick had the proud privilege of going about our neighborhood at sunset, with a ladder and a supply of matches, to set these lamps alight. We used to watch him, and wonder if we should ever get old enough and sufficiently influential to occupy a public position like his. But before we reached the required age and dignity the old lamp-posts had been taken down in favor of electric lights.No one had his letters brought to his house. If he wanted his mail, or wished to send a letter, he went to the post-office. The nine o'clock parade of citizens making toward that building was one of the regular features of life in the town.At nine in the evening a church bell rang the curfew,—although it had absolutely no significance. It had always been done: that was reason sufficient for an old and conservative place. When the ringer died, or something else happened to stop its mournful sound, a well-to-do citizen quickly provided funds to continue the ringing. The curfew laws, with their reference to children, had not come into vogue, so the bell sounded each evening simply out of regard for an old custom. Few heard it, and to few of these did it make the slightest difference.We did not often hear foreign tongues or see foreign faces on the streets. Once in a while we might overhear two old women, with shawls over their heads, conversing in Irish as they passed along. The Mediterranean peoples had not arrived,—although they had sent a pioneer in the person of Mr. Mazzoni, who presidedover a little stand at the foot of Main Street, and was an important personage to us, because of the peanuts which he sold.The boys who went to the parochial school, the Pats and Mikes, were a kind of hostile crew, and when we met it was usually with an exchange of horse-chestnuts or snowballs. This was because of no racial or religious animosity,—we were simply two rival gangs, that was all. On one occasion, when Ed Mason and I met a number of the parochial school boys out in the country, there was an exchange of epithets that stopped (as such meetings did not always stop) this side of blows. I was reduced to a state of almost tearful indignation when one of the little Irish boys asserted that I was "a Protestant."I denied the charge vehemently, but when I got home and repeated the insult,I learned that it was only too true. I had never suspected it, and had gone on thinking that I was merely a Unitarian. Alas, it seemed that I was a Protestant as well.The charm and quaintness of the past had by no means vanished from the old town. Wooden ships were still built on the river, now and then, and the sea-captains gathered and gossiped in the rooms of the Marine Society. Overhead was a museum of curiosities of the deep, and of foreign lands. Some one of the captains would always be willing to unlock the room for us, and let us inspect the dusty albatross, the dried flying-fishes, the little ships in bottles, and all the other objects of interest.One grocery, still displayed the sign "E. & W. I. Goods," and more than one citizen walked the streets in a beaver hat. There was old fat Captain Millett,who tacked down Main Street every morning in summer under an enormous green-lined umbrella, big enough to shelter a family. There was Captain Bannister, who lived alone in his curious little house on West Injy Lane, where he cultivated a garden patch of cinnamon pinks. And there was Mr. Babbitt, the Quaker gentleman, who used to pass with stately tread, as we played on Elm Street, or about the pond. He was tall and dignified, and he wore a high hat and a frock coat,—I had almost said a surtout,—with a shirt collar so high and antiquated that he seemed to belong to the time of Martin Van Buren. He kept on his black velvet ear-caps until summer was well advanced, and he put them on again the first of September. But he was the friend of a great poet, and every one respected him for that, as well as for his own character.There was still a town crier,—one of the last, or, as he claimed, the very last one in this country. "Squawboo" (as we were told we must not call him), or Mr. Landford (as we were told we ought to call him), walked the streets with a large dinner bell. He would pause at intervals, and ring his bell vigorously. Then, throwing back his head, he would emit a volume of sound which would strike the hearer with astonishment. I have seen strangers paralyzed with amazement as they heard for the first time, and unexpectedly, the deep, tremendous tones that issued from his throat."Hear—what—I—have—to—say!" he would begin. "Grand—dance—at—City—Hall—to-morrow—evening—at—eight—o'clock.—Admission—fifty—cents—ladies free!—COME, ONE—COME,EVERYBODY!!"And then he would ring the bell again, and walk on.I have stopped, for the most of this chapter, to explain what kind of a town it was in which we passed the believing years, the years which began with us, and continued for a dozen summers or so. But now, if you please, we will return to that afternoon when we dashed out of school, and left Mr. Colburn and Miss Temple behind. We ran into a land of wonder. The first thing for me to learn about was that fishing trip for to-morrow.I hastily consulted Ed Mason about it. No; we could not go, it must be postponed. Parts of the necessary tackle were missing, and there were reasons, connected with the approaching Fourth of July, why neither of us desired to make any avoidable expenditures just then.But there was another plan, into which I might be admitted,—if I could prove trustworthy."You won't tell?" queried Ed Mason."Course not!""Cross your heart?"I crossed my heart and hoped I might die.But I could not know just then,—I must wait until next morning.It was fearful discipline for the soul, but I survived until after breakfast the next day. Then I presented myself at the Masons' side yard,—their house was within stone's throw of ours.Ed had, so I understood, some mysterious recipe,—some ceremony to perform that was not only extraordinary in itself, but it was to be rewarded in the most fascinating manner imaginable.He came out of the house with a serious face, led me down behind an apple tree, and there, after looking carefully about for eavesdroppers, unfolded the cryptic plot.CHAPTER IIIMAGICYou took rose-leaves—fresh rose-leaves—and mixed them with brown sugar. Then you wrapped them in a leaf from a grape-vine, and buried the whole business in the ground. You let them stay for three days. At the end of that time you dug them up and ate them; ate them with rapture known only to those who have eaten this particular delicacy. For to the natural fragrance of the rose-leaves and the nourishing and delicious properties of brown sugar, that interval of three days in the warm earth had added a new quality. A mysterious alchemy had been at work and transformed the mixture into something exquisite—adish to be envied by great kings and sultans. It had about it odors of the East; savors of Araby the blest.So said Ed Mason's older brother, Billy. And he was nearly thirteen. He did not use all the words which I have used to describe the taste of the rose-leaf compound. He had merely said it was "bully." That was enough for us—that, and the charm of the operation itself. He had tried it many times in the far-off days of his youth; and now we set out to make some for ourselves.The rose-leaves were easy to get. We had only to climb over the fence and we were in Auntie Merrill's garden. Auntie Merrill was old, and she seldom came into the garden. She had no one with whom to share it; and the roses budded, bloomed, and dropped their petals unheeded to the path. From this path we gathered some; but it is likely that otherswere induced, with little effort, to leave the full-blown flowers a day or two in advance of their natural fall.Roses are beautiful things, even to boys of eight or nine, but æsthetic considerations must give way before the stern, practical demands of life.We debated whether red or yellow roses were most likely to give good results. At last we decided to combine the two colors, and a tempting mixture they made. We put the leaves in my hat, and climbed the fence again into the Masons' back yard.The next ingredient was brown sugar. Here, again, the matter was simple. A barrel of the pleasing substance lived in a certain dim passage leading from Ed Mason's mother's pantry. It was dark, moist, and a joy forever. It had the crawly habit peculiar to brown sugar, and it came away (when questing hands wereplunged into the barrel) in lumps that filled the mouth and turned the cares of life to vanity and unimportance. With it, during hard days, we frequently restored our wasted tissues.The rose-leaves were left to themselves while we made a reconnaissance in force toward the place of the sugar barrel. The enemy (one Nora Sullivan, a desperate character) was reported as engaged in washing dishes in the kitchen. She neglected to station any outposts, so her carelessness was our advantage.We made the customary investigation for a large gray rat—supposed, since a time to which the mind of man runneth not back, to dwell behind the barrel. As usual, he was found missing.We seized the sugar and retired in discretion and stickiness to the yard. There we mixed the rose-leaves and the sugar. From the vine that grew on theside of the woodshed we picked a large leaf. This was the vine that furnished leaves to be worn inside our hats to prevent sunstroke on hot days.No one knows how many sunstrokes we escaped by means of those grape leaves.We wrapped the red and yellow petals, well covered with sugar, in the grape leaf, and secured it with straws and blades of grass. No creeping worm nor brisk beetle was to partake of this food of the gods.Next came the rite of burial. There was no doubt that the leaf and its contents must be buried in Auntie Merrill's garden. That was the scene of all mysteries, and the only place where our caché would be reasonably secure from Ed Mason's sister Louise and her friend Jessie Plummer. These were high matters, too great for the feminine intellect. Also, of course,we had Auntie Merrill to consider. A place must be discovered where she would not come poking around."Back of the lilies-of-the-valley," said Ed Mason."It's kind of wet there," I objected."What dif'rence does that make?""Well, it might not work there. I tell you: let's put 'em in the corner, near Hawkins' shed.""No; I want 'em back of the lilies-of-the-valley. It's my mother's brown sugar, and Billy told me how to do it. You wouldn't know anything 'bout it if I hadn't told you!"I succumbed to the force of this argument, and we began to excavate back of the lily bed. With shingles (procured from men who were shingling Dr. Macey's barn) we dug the pit and covered the grape leaf with earth. Then, after driving away a prowling cat (who probablyrecollected funeral services performed over deceased robins in that very garden), we climbed the fence once more and set out to endure the weary interval of three days.It was Saturday morning, and ten o'clock. Not until Tuesday at the same hour could we unearth the treasure.Billy had said so.Three days were required, no more and no less. At the end of that time, to the minute, the magic forces that dwelt in the earth would have effected the change, and what we buried as simple brown sugar and the petals of roses would come forth in a new form—a form to make epicures sigh with content.We walked up the yard, by the woodshed, past the apple tree and the clothes-jack, and out to the street. But something had happened. A thick black cloud had descended and covered us. A fewminutes before, the sun was shining gloriously, and we stood on the mountain peak of action and expectancy. Now it had all come to an end; the rose-leaves were buried, and before us in all their hideous length and tediousness stretched those three days.Three days!Three years rather! The face of the heavens was darkened and we wandered in gloom. We made an effort of cheerfulness and started for the pond with a view to catching Lucky-bugs. But we abandoned this almost immediately, and decided to hunt up Jimmy Toppan, who lived next door. Then we remembered that Jimmy had gone to his grandmother's farm in the country for the whole day. By this time the pall that overhung us had become deeper and more insufferable.We turned the corner of the street and gazed drearily at Dr. Macey's barn andthe men at work on its roof. The old shingles were coming down with a clatter, and the odor of the new ones filled the air.Perhaps there was hope in shingles!We remembered that it takes but few strokes of a jack-knife, a little cutting and boring, to convert a shingle into a boat. It only needs pointing at the bows and rounding at the stern, the insertion of a mast and the fitting of a paper sail—half an old envelope will do. The boats thus fashioned would sail half across the pond—until stuck in the lily-pads.We chose two shingles and began to whittle. But there was no salt in it. Our minds wandered, and after a few moments Ed dropped his shingle, closed his knife, and put it in his pocket."I'm goin' into the barn an' look for mice," he announced.About the chutes which let grain intothe stalls, mice were known to linger. Once I had caught one in my hands, a feat which I instantly regretted, for the mouse bit my finger and made his escape in short order. Since that time the pursuit of the common drab mouse had been considered a pastime not without the charm of danger and the risk of bloodshed. But now the mention of mice only brought my thoughts back—as if they needed bringing!—to the subject that possessed us both."Do you think you drove that old cat away?" I asked abruptly.Ed understood immediately; I did not need to specify the cat."I dunno," he said; "she may be foolin' round now. P'r'aps we ought to go and see.""Let's," I replied quickly.We crossed the street, cut across the Toppans' back yard, and then, by a certainfence route, well understood and prescribed for all important occasions, entered Auntie Merrill's garden.A cat slunk off between the box hedges, and a robin flew hurriedly from the fence to the apple tree where he had his nest of mud and dried grass. He uttered three or four excited notes as he flew.The sunlight of a morning in late June fell in patches on the paths, the hedges, and the flower beds. The rose-bushes dropped their petals, and the syringa moved in the breeze.That was a garden!It had old-fashioned flowers—snapdragons, portulacas (now in full blaze in the sun), and hollyhocks—in the days before old-fashioned flowers became new-fashioned again. Orioles hunted their food in the fruit trees to carry it back to their hanging nests in the elms that shaded the street near by. It was firefly-hauntedat night, and we used to run up and down the paths and try to catch the fireflies in our hats. It was full of long, mysterious vistas, overgrown shrubs breaking in on the paths, and valuable hiding-places. Plums grew there, and pears and cherries and peaches.When, on rare occasions, Auntie Merrill walked slowly down the path, she appeared to be totally unaware that Indians, highway robbers, pirates, cowboys, spies, scouts, and other ruffians were dogging her footsteps from bush to bush. We always thought it best to keep an eye on her.It is a perfectly safe place to-day. Auntie Merrill is dead; the shrubs are trimmed, the hedges cut down, the paths covered with asphalt, and the whole garden a dismal spectacle of precision, order, and expensive simplicity.But on the morning when we returnedto look after our buried rose-leaves, no one had dreamed of these wretched improvements. Keeping well down below the hedge, we reached the lilies-of-the-valley without encountering any opposition. The place of burial was inspected and the earth searched for tracks.None appeared.Then we stood over the spot and meditated. A lilac bush sheltered us from inquisitive persons in the house.Finally Ed Mason spoke."I wonder how they're gettin' on," he said."I wonder!" said I.Then there was another pause. I poked my foot among the lilies where we had concealed the shingles we had used as trowels. They were waiting for Tuesday morning.Ed spoke again."Let's dig 'em up and look at 'em!"Already I was fishing for the shingles. In half a minute we had brought the grape leaf once more to the light of day. We unfastened it and gazed upon its contents.It was a quarter past ten. Fifteen minutes had passed since we buried the mixture."Don't you suppose they're done?" I queried.Ed's only reply was to take a pinch between his fingers and convey it to his mouth.I did the same.Then we ate the whole lot. It tasted—and on this point I will pledge my word—it tasted exactly like rose-leaves and brown sugar!CHAPTER IVNAPOLEON JONESOn an afternoon early in the following week, Jimmy Toppan, Ed Mason, and I were seriously engaged at the frog pond. We had discovered, in the morning, an outlet, through which all the water was in danger of escaping. The town authorities seemed to have overlooked this channel, but we could not let their neglect cause public suffering.To have the pond run dry was too serious to contemplate!"The water wouldn'tallgo out," asserted Ed Mason, "'cos there's a place, back of the Court House, where there ain't any bottom.""That ain't inthispond," Jimmy corrected, "it's over in Davenport's."But Ed stuck to his opinion."Itishere. An' there was a volcano here once, an' when the volcano dried up, the pond came."We looked with considerable interest toward the site of the extinct crater. But all was placid blue water now, and whatever might be concealed beneath the surface remained a secret.Our duty was not the less clear, and we set out to build a dam that should keep in the water, volcano or no volcano, bottomless pit or not.On the terrace above us sat an old man, who watched our proceedings, chewed tobacco vigorously, and whittled small sticks. We had seen him, sitting on the same bench, in the morning. Indeed, he had been there for days, perhaps weeks, past, until he had become a fixture in the landscape.Ed Mason climbed the terrace to get another armful of stones for the dam. As he was returning, the old man called Ed to him, and offered, as a gift, a little musket whittled out of soft pine. The stones were laid down promptly, the gift accepted, and the two engaged in conversation. Jimmy and I could not hear what was being said, but we observed the incident of the little musket, and our interest in the dam waned. We went up the terrace to see if there were any more muskets to be distributed.But when we arrived, the old fellow pointed at Ed with his jack-knife, and addressed us."He wants to know if I ever was in a battle!"Evidently the question had been an absurd one. We gathered this from the tone of derision with which it was repeated, and we promptly showed our appreciationof its absurdity by grinning. We marvelled at Ed's obtuseness. Not to recognize this round-faced old man in the dark-blue suit as the very incarnation of war could only be downright stupidity."Was I ever in a battle?" he inquired with deliberate sarcasm. "Well, I don't know whatyoucall a battle, but what do you think of a hundred an' thirty guns on one hill an' eighty guns on another hill, all blazing away at each other like Sancho?"We thought well of it. It seemed to us a very respectable battle. But Ed Mason was destined to put his foot in it again. He held up the little pine musket."Guns like this?" he queried.The old fellow looked at Ed for a moment. Then he turned his gaze toward Jimmy and me and shook his head sorrowfully."No, not guns like that. Them's whatthe infantry has. A hundred an' thirty of them against eighty wouldn't be no battle. 'Twould be a squeamish. An' a darned small one at that. I meanguns. Don't you know what guns be?"Jimmy Toppan spoke."Oh, I know! Cannons. Like the one they fired last Fourth of July, down at the foot of River Street.""Yes, that's the kind, I guess. I wa'n't there. Dave Hunt was doin' that. I see in the paper they called him 'Gunner David Hunt.' I nearly bust over that. 'Gunner David Hunt'!"He rocked forward and back on the bench, chuckling and repeating, "GunnerDavid Hunt!" from time to time."Why, where do you think he was durin' the whole war?"We could not imagine."Down in Boston Harbor—that'swhere he was. Why, he never smelled powder in his life!"This seemed extraordinary to me. I had seen "Gunner David Hunt" on that Fourth of July, and if he hadn't smelled powder that day, he must have been suffering with a fearful cold. I had smelled it distinctly; even kept, as I was, at a discreet distance. For Mr. Hunt, working with the greatest activity in the midst of clouds of smoke, not to have detected the odor struck me as amazing. I was incautious enough to point out my impressions to the old fellow in blue.He rewarded me with another such look of scorn as that with which he greeted Ed's mistake about the guns."He never smelled powder, I tell yer. That means he never heard a shot fired in anger. He may have fired some of them guns down in that fort in Boston Harbor, at a hogshead floatin' in the water,jus' for practice. But he never stood up against the enemy an' give 'em back shot for shot. An' the paper called him 'GunnerHunt'! Oh, my Chris'mas!"He rocked forward and back again, and laughed long and heartily. As it seemed to be the proper thing to do, all three of us laughed, as well as we could, over the presumption of Mr. Hunt.Then the soldier became serious. He took his walking-stick, held it out at arm's length, and pointed across the pond."Do you see that Court House over there?"As it was the most prominent object in the landscape, and hardly one hundred yards distant, we instantly admitted that we did see it."An' do you see George Washin'ton over to the right?"Yes; George Washington was plainlyvisible. There he stood, on his pedestal, with his arm stretched out at his side, as if to smack any small boy who walked on the grass."Well, over beyond George Washin'ton was where the enemy's batteries lay—they stretched from there up to Joe Peabody's house.""When was this?"We all spoke at once, and in great excitement.Enemy's batterieson Elm Street!The old man looked at us solemnly, and chewed with great deliberation."That's to give you an idea how they lay on the field. This is on a small scale, you see. Our guns were right along this bank, from here to the fourth tree. No, the fifth. And that graveyard back there," he turned around and pointed, "was 'bout in the same position, only it run down nearer where we are now. Down therewhere the pond is, was near a mile of open—wheat-fields and so on. Everything was mighty quiet 'bout the middle of the morning, 'cos we'd been fightin' for two days, you see. We could see the rebels plain enough, an' knew they was up to some deviltry. But we knew the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte had his eye on 'em all right."Napoleon Bonaparte! Our eyes opened at this. "Was Napoleon Bonaparte in this battle?" I asked."Washe?" returned the soldier, with great energy. "I guess he come pretty near bein'. He was in command of the whole army. Who did yer think was, excep' him?"I had not given the matter much thought. But I replied weakly that I supposed Napoleon had lived in France."You did? Well, you got that out of a book, I s'pose?"I admitted, with some embarrassment, that I did get it from a book."I thought so. Well, if you're so smart with your books, why don't you tell this instead of me? P'r'aps you was in this battle, hey?"My face became uncomfortably warm. I could not think of anything to say. After waiting a little, the soldier continued."If this young feller, that knows so all-fired much, ain't goin' to tell us how this battle was fought, I might as well go on. As I says before, we could see their guns, an' we could see the rebels movin' about 'round 'em. Some of their guns was in a little patch of woods, over where that team is standin' now. It kep' on quiet for more'n two hours—no one firin' a shot. Then we see the rebels was gettin' ready. They moved some of their batteries. An' then the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparterode up to me on his white hoss, an' he says, 'Bring out yer guns!' An' so I brought 'em out!"My doubts vanished. That white horse was conclusive.Ed Mason spoke in an awed voice:—"What did you say?""What did I say? I says, 'All right, yer Majesty.' An' I fetched the guns round to the northwestward.""What did Napoleon do then?" asked Ed."What did he do? He just sat there on his white hoss an' he watched to see if we did it all right. An' we lined 'em up smart, an' unlimbered, an' back went the hosses, an' there we was, all ready in no time. The Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte he says, 'First-rate, boys; you did that slick as grease!'""An' then the rebels let off two guns for a signal, an' then their whole hundredan' thirty began to once, an' so did our eighty. An' that kep' up for an hour.""Did any of their shots hit you?" inquired Jimmy."Not to speak of. They fired too high. Their shells went plumb over our heads, an' over the infantry, who was lyin' on the ground behind us, an' bust in the cemetary. Some of the gravestones was broke. Some of our men was killed when the caissons blew up."We had no idea what caissons were; but they blew up—that was enough for us."Then the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte ordered us to cease firin', one battery at a time. That was where he was foxy. He wanted to make the rebels think our guns had been dismounted, or that we was out of ammunition, so's they would charge. And he fooled 'em, sure enough, for pretty soon they did charge!"He paused, and bit off some more tobacco, while we jumped up and down with excitement. Then he pointed again with his cane."Do you see them three trees to the left of the white house? Well, bearin' a little to the right of them is a clump of bushes. There was some woods at that p'int of the enemy's position, an' they come outer them. We could see 'em plain as day, a long line of infantry, an' the officers on hosses. Some of 'em was in gray uniforms, but not all. We could see their flags, an' the sun shinin' on the bayonets. First one long line come, an' then another, an' then another. There was close to fifteen thousand of 'em—more than all the folks in this town!"We followed his gaze across the pond, across the mall, to that clump of bushes. At any moment we expected to see thegray-clad lines break out from behind them and start toward us with loud yells. But we had forgotten how securely we were planted behind the old man's batteries."It didn't take us a minute to open on 'em. We had our guns trained in no time, an' we made it mighty hot for 'em as they come across that valley. One bunch come right for my guns, but we had loaded with grape an' we just blew 'em to smithereens. They turned round, what was left of 'em, an' run back like Jesse. There was a rebel general on a brown hoss, an' his hoss went down, an' we nearly gothim."He stopped. After waiting a moment, we all burst out:—"What happened then?""Why, nothin'. The battle was over. The rebels had skedaddled. But the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, he calledme 'round to his tent that night, an' he give me this cane.""What,thatone?""This one. He says, says he: 'I like the way you worked your guns to-day, an' I want you to keep this stick to remember me by. I cut it myself.'"He let each boy of us take the stick in his hand and examine it reverently. It was a cane of some brown wood, with a round knob at the top, made of ivory or bone.Then he took a fat silver watch out of his pocket, and looked at that."It's pretty nigh supper-time, an' I'm goin' along."He rose from the bench and walked slowly away, limping slightly, and leaning on the cane—the cane that Napoleon had given him!We walked toward our homes, maintaining a profound silence. On the otherside of the pond we met Rob Currier, who was catching hornpouts. He addressed us derisively."Was that old Napoleon Jones you were talking with? He been giving you some of his yarns? My father says he's cracked. He was in the Civil War, but some one got him all worked up about Napoleon, till he thinks he has seen him."If Rob had hit each one of us in the face with a wet hornpout, the effect would have been more agreeable. We encountered a realist for the first time when we met Rob that afternoon. We were walking through a golden haze of romance, when he suddenly drew this leaden-gray cloud across the sky."You make me sick!" declared Ed Mason; "didn't he show us the very cane that Napoleon gave him?""Of course he did!" replied Jimmy Toppan.And "Of course he did!" I chimed in.So we fell on Rob Currier, dragged him down on the turf, and stuffed grass and clover down the back of his neck until he yelled:—"I take it all back!"Then we let him up.

THE BELIEVING YEARSTHE MACMILLAN COMPANYNEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGOSAN FRANCISCOMACMILLAN & CO., LimitedLONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTAMELBOURNETHE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.TORONTOTHE BELIEVING YEARSBYEDMUND LESTER PEARSONNew YorkTHE MACMILLAN COMPANY1911All rights reservedCopyright, 1910,By THE OUTLOOK COMPANY.Copyright, 1911,By THE OUTLOOK COMPANY.Copyright, 1911,By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1911.Norwood PressJ. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.ToEDMUND CARLTON PEARSON(1841-1897)"E'en as he trod that day to God so walked he from his birth,In simpleness and gentleness and honor and clean mirth."NOTEA number of the incidents described in this book have been used in a series of stories published inThe Outlook. To The Outlook Company my thanks are due for their courteous permission to retell these stories in an altered form.E. L. P.CONTENTSCHAPTERPAGEI.Mr. Colburn1II.The Old Town12III.Magic26IV.Napoleon Jones40V.A Run on the Bank57VI.Horace71VII.The Great Day82VIII.The Green Chest98IX.White Peacocks113X.The Flight130XI.Up Like a Rocket147XII.Susy160XIII.Arma Puerumque Cano177XIV.When My Ship Comes In195XV.The Lucky-Bug209XVI.West Injy Lane223XVII.Their Unaccountable Behavior240XVIII.The Siege of Auntie Merrill256XIX.Entertaining Alice269XX.While the Evil Days Come Not282THE BELIEVING YEARSCHAPTER IMR. COLBURNEach boy in the school-room had fixed his mind on two objects: the calendar and the clock. On the former stood out in big black charactersJune20The clock pointed to the hour of three. Exactly sixty minutes separated us from vacation. It was the day of our dreams,—the last day of school.We had thought of it, thought of it far back when snow still covered the ground; planned for it, lived in hope of it. To-morrow the tyrannical bell should besilent, and no one could say: "Time to start for school!"Many forces had been at work hurrying this day forward: the first blades of grass, the first leaves on the horse-chestnut trees, the first robin who ran across the grass-plots overlooking the frog pond, the first dandelion that gleamed in the grass. All were signs and symbols of it.But in spite of so many omens, the day itself had been outrageously slow to arrive. The robins had abated the enthusiasm of the first few weeks, and become quieter. They were sober householders and family men, now. The golden blossoms of the dandelions were transformed into that shape in which they are useful chiefly to blow upon three times to see at what o'clock your mother wants you. The season had arrived for swimming,—indeed, it had been here for weeks,—Ed Mason and Rob Currier claimed tohave gone in swimming at Four Rocks as early as the last day of April. The fish in Little River needed our careful attention. And in front of Austin's shop had long stood a sign displaying a pink pyramid with a spoon stuck therein, and the seductive words "Ice Cream," a spectacle that made our Fourth of July money stir uneasily in our pockets.In short, all the elements of vacation were here,—all but the thing itself. Each morning the summons came at twenty minutes of nine, and each morning we trod the dismal path. Pencils squeaked, and slaty smells arose as the slates were covered with figures and then cleaned with damp sponges. The pungent odor of cedar, from newly sharpened lead-pencils, mingled with the fragrance of pickled limes,—smuggled into school and eaten contrary to the orders of Miss Temple, the teacher. Outside, summercalled us in a dozen different ways. And, uneasy prisoners, we chafed and wriggled in our seats.But, somehow, the days had dragged by, and even this final one had nearly gone. At the last moment, when our release was so near at hand, a dismal spectre arose before us to block the way. It was the forbidding form of Mr. Colburn.This was a man who had written an arithmetic,—an arithmetic of singular and diabolical ingenuity. He had done this thing long before any of us were born, and then he had passed from the earth. But his work had remained to annoy us. Occasionally, during the last hour of the afternoon session, we wrestled with Mr. Colburn, by request. This was in addition to the regular arithmetic lesson in the morning.I conceived Mr. Colburn as a tall,spare man, clad in brown leather. His face was brown and leathery, too, and it was puckered and sour. In one hand he held his famous book,—in the other, a big switch. He was full of impertinent curiosity, was Mr. Colburn, and he had no manner of interest in the things that really concerned us.I wanted to know if Ed Mason (whose seat was next but one behind mine) were going fishing to-morrow morning. Mr. Colburn wanted to know if 3 fifths of a chaldron of coal cost 8 dollars, what is the whole chaldron worth?I did not care what it was worth, I did not know what a chaldron was, anyway,—and I have never found out. But I saw we were in for an uncomfortable hour as soon as Miss Temple said:"Take your Colburn's Arithmetics and sit up straight in your seats.... Robert, did you throw that? Well, you may goand stand in that corner, with your face to the wall."Rob Currier did as he was directed with undisguised delight. By one skilful stroke he had put himself beyond the clutch of Mr. Colburn. The rest of us looked upon him with envy,—if we had only been so inspired!It was base of Miss Temple to devote the last hour of school to Colburn's Arithmetic. We thought regretfully of another teacher we had once had. She would have read to us the adventures of "The Prince and the Pauper," and that was altogether better than fretting us about the price of coal. Never in my life have I wished to know the worth of a chaldron of coal, but if ever I have such a wish doubtless the dealer will tell me straight out.But that was not the way with the people Mr. Colburn knew,—they couldnever give you a decent answer about anything. If you asked one of Mr. Colburn's friends the price of his horse, he would reply that the horse and the saddle together were worth 100 dollars, but the horse was worth 9 times as much as the saddle,—and that was all you could get out of him.For my part, I privately resolved never to buy horses of any such disagreeable folk,—a resolution which I have faithfully kept.Miss Temple must have observed my anxiety to speak with Ed Mason, for she promptly called upon me:—"Samuel, you may take Question 61. Read it.""'A man bought 1 ton and 4 fifths of a ton of fustic for 43 dollars, what was that a ton?'"I struggled with it for a few moments, vaguely wondering what fustic might be,but in the end I was compelled to say that I did not know. Jimmy Toppan and Charley Carter both fell victims to the question. It was finally answered, with some help from Miss Temple, by Joe Carter. The answer did not seem very interesting to us, after it had been found and worked out on the blackboard.We were watching the clock.Mr. Colburn would not have cared for clocks,—unless, indeed, he could have made up some hateful question about them. He did not care for our fishing trips; he had no interest in the frog pond and its creatures. The warm, summer day outside had no attraction for him.He wanted to know if cloth 4 quarters wide is worth 8 dollars a yard, what is 1 yard of the same kind of cloth, that is 5 quarters wide, worth? And his conspirator, Miss Temple, aided and abetted him in his curiosity. She fired the questionsat us with unremitting vigor. We were called upon to reduce 9-4/7 to an improper fraction, though how any one could wish to inject into it any more impropriety than it already seemed to possess, was a matter impossible to understand.The long hour wore on. From outside came the drone of insects. A flock of sheep passed the school,—driven up Elm Street by men who were probably hurrying them to their fate. We tried to look out the windows and watch the progress of the sheep, but we were recalled by Miss Temple, to whom the incident suggested nothing except a chance to try upon us what Mr. Colburn seems to have considered his crowning effort."A man driving his geese to market was met by another, who said, Good morrow, master, with your hundred geese; says he, I have not a hundred; but if I had half as many more as I now have,and two geese and a half, I should have a hundred; how many had he?"Disheartening as this problem appeared, together with its inhuman suggestion of a man carrying half of a goose about with him, it nevertheless proved useful to us. Joe Carter and one or two others (who affected to enjoy Mr. Colburn) engaged in a long wrangle with each other and with Miss Temple, about the number of geese owned by this palpable lunatic. We regarded them, at first, with a pity not unmixed with loathing; then, as we observed how they were taking up the time, we came to appreciate the value of the discussion. Ed Mason and Jimmy Toppan, from the depths of a complete ignorance of the subject, managed to interject one or two inquiries that had the happy result of tangling every one up still worse, and thus prolonging the goose argument.To our great joy the problem was still unsolved at five minutes of four. Then Miss Temple was forced to bid us close the books. She made a few perfunctory remarks, wished us a pleasant vacation, and, when a gong sounded throughout the building, dismissed the class.We filed to get our hats, filed downstairs, through the hall, and out the door with a concerted and enthusiastic yell. Mr. Colburn and imprisonment lay behind us; ahead were vacation and freedom. So we whooped once more, and again, until a scissors-grinder, who had gone to sleep on the grass under a tree, woke up with a start. The old horse who drew Oliver's bakery wagon had been standing sleepily in front of a house on the other side of Elm Street. At our third shout he ambled clumsily off, while Mr. Oliver, with a basket of buns in his hand, pursued him down the street.CHAPTER IITHE OLD TOWNElm Street, into which we rushed that afternoon, was a broad thoroughfare extending from one end of the town to the other. On both sides it was lined with trees, set at the edge of the brick sidewalks. Mainly fine tall elms, they lent a distinction to the street and made it notable among those which characterize the older towns of New England. In the opinion of all the citizens, Elm Street was beyond comparison.Local pride did not exaggerate. Its unusual length, its great, graceful trees and the dignified houses, made the street undoubtedly beautiful. There were houses of every style which has been invogue during two hundred years. Roofs which sloped in the rear nearly to the ground, gambrel roofs, and the various less attractive fashions of the nineteenth century,—all were there.But those of which the owners were most proud, those best suited to the street, were the great, square, three-storied houses, built in the early years of the century. That was the time of the town's prosperity, before a fire had checked its growth, before shifting sands had almost closed its harbor. Ships from the old town sailed every ocean then, and carried our flag into strange, foreign ports. Their captains, or their owners, built many of the big, square houses, so you could often see, on the roof, a little railed platform, where the householder might stand of a morning to sweep the harbor and the ocean with his spy-glass. Charley Carter's father did this regularly,although the ships in which he was interested sailed to this port no longer, if, indeed, they sailed at all.The town was built along one bank of the river, and Elm Street followed the crest of the slope. It was an easy thing, therefore, for any one standing on the roof of one of the houses to get a good view of the river, the salt marshes, the sand-dunes, and the ocean. The ocean spread out there, bright and clear, from the dim blue mountain that rose on the far horizon in Maine, to the low hills of Cape Ann. Sometimes, at night, the east wind brought the rumble of breakers, or the booming sound of a whistling buoy that guarded the harbor.The town was long and very narrow. From Elm Street you could look down some of the cross streets to the river, and beyond. On the other side of Elm Street, as soon as you had passed the gardensthat lay behind the big houses, you were almost in open country. There were a few outlying farms, a few shanties, and then bare, scrubby fields, the Common Pasture, rocky knolls and clumps of woods. On one of these farms dwelt Mr. Diggery,—a fierce little man, of whom we went in terror.So near did the river come to the lower part of the town that a storm often made people who lived in that quarter need high boots to get across the street; while the country (unexplored wilds to us!) closed up so near on the other side of Elm Street, that owls, woodchucks, and an occasional fox penetrated the gardens.It was this nearness of the river and ocean, and of the open country, that made the town such a delightful dwelling-place for us. Even the centre of the town, the neighborhood where Ed Mason and Jimmy Toppan lived, and Rob Currier,the two Carters, Horace Winslow, Peter Bailey, and I,—this was a region thick with the possibilities of adventure. Much of this centred about the frog pond and the Mall. The pond was full of goldfish, and other humbler fish, and toads, frogs, and water-beetles. You were sure to find something interesting whenever you walked around the pond. Many of our neighbors on Elm Street owned large gardens, to which we had entrance—either by permission, or by the informal and far more adventurous method of climbing the back fence.The owners of the gardens, at that period, were mostly elderly persons, dwelling in great contentment and the most profound quiet. Their lives were comfortable, well-ordered, and precise. They lived mainly in the past. They pondered much on some grandfather, or great-grandfather, who had built up afortune through foreign trade, and they heeded not at all the remarks of envious and ill-natured folk who liked to point out that one of the chief commodities of this trade was rum. The principal hallmark of their respectability was a portrait of their ancestor, with very pink cheeks,—the sign of an outdoor life, and not necessarily an indication of a taste for port and madeira.Beside this venerable portrait would hang a lively representation of the shipSally B., as she appeared on some memorable occasion entering the harbor of Singapore, and viewed by one of those artists who invariably happen to be near by when the ship is under full sail and making not less than twelve knots.It was a period not so very far removed from our own time, and yet different from it in a number of respects. No thumping, grinding trolley car disturbed thequiet of Elm Street that bright June afternoon. Infrequently, an omnibus rambled up and down. By night the darkness was punctuated here and there by a gas flame at the top of an iron lamp post. Rob Currier's big brother Dick had the proud privilege of going about our neighborhood at sunset, with a ladder and a supply of matches, to set these lamps alight. We used to watch him, and wonder if we should ever get old enough and sufficiently influential to occupy a public position like his. But before we reached the required age and dignity the old lamp-posts had been taken down in favor of electric lights.No one had his letters brought to his house. If he wanted his mail, or wished to send a letter, he went to the post-office. The nine o'clock parade of citizens making toward that building was one of the regular features of life in the town.At nine in the evening a church bell rang the curfew,—although it had absolutely no significance. It had always been done: that was reason sufficient for an old and conservative place. When the ringer died, or something else happened to stop its mournful sound, a well-to-do citizen quickly provided funds to continue the ringing. The curfew laws, with their reference to children, had not come into vogue, so the bell sounded each evening simply out of regard for an old custom. Few heard it, and to few of these did it make the slightest difference.We did not often hear foreign tongues or see foreign faces on the streets. Once in a while we might overhear two old women, with shawls over their heads, conversing in Irish as they passed along. The Mediterranean peoples had not arrived,—although they had sent a pioneer in the person of Mr. Mazzoni, who presidedover a little stand at the foot of Main Street, and was an important personage to us, because of the peanuts which he sold.The boys who went to the parochial school, the Pats and Mikes, were a kind of hostile crew, and when we met it was usually with an exchange of horse-chestnuts or snowballs. This was because of no racial or religious animosity,—we were simply two rival gangs, that was all. On one occasion, when Ed Mason and I met a number of the parochial school boys out in the country, there was an exchange of epithets that stopped (as such meetings did not always stop) this side of blows. I was reduced to a state of almost tearful indignation when one of the little Irish boys asserted that I was "a Protestant."I denied the charge vehemently, but when I got home and repeated the insult,I learned that it was only too true. I had never suspected it, and had gone on thinking that I was merely a Unitarian. Alas, it seemed that I was a Protestant as well.The charm and quaintness of the past had by no means vanished from the old town. Wooden ships were still built on the river, now and then, and the sea-captains gathered and gossiped in the rooms of the Marine Society. Overhead was a museum of curiosities of the deep, and of foreign lands. Some one of the captains would always be willing to unlock the room for us, and let us inspect the dusty albatross, the dried flying-fishes, the little ships in bottles, and all the other objects of interest.One grocery, still displayed the sign "E. & W. I. Goods," and more than one citizen walked the streets in a beaver hat. There was old fat Captain Millett,who tacked down Main Street every morning in summer under an enormous green-lined umbrella, big enough to shelter a family. There was Captain Bannister, who lived alone in his curious little house on West Injy Lane, where he cultivated a garden patch of cinnamon pinks. And there was Mr. Babbitt, the Quaker gentleman, who used to pass with stately tread, as we played on Elm Street, or about the pond. He was tall and dignified, and he wore a high hat and a frock coat,—I had almost said a surtout,—with a shirt collar so high and antiquated that he seemed to belong to the time of Martin Van Buren. He kept on his black velvet ear-caps until summer was well advanced, and he put them on again the first of September. But he was the friend of a great poet, and every one respected him for that, as well as for his own character.There was still a town crier,—one of the last, or, as he claimed, the very last one in this country. "Squawboo" (as we were told we must not call him), or Mr. Landford (as we were told we ought to call him), walked the streets with a large dinner bell. He would pause at intervals, and ring his bell vigorously. Then, throwing back his head, he would emit a volume of sound which would strike the hearer with astonishment. I have seen strangers paralyzed with amazement as they heard for the first time, and unexpectedly, the deep, tremendous tones that issued from his throat."Hear—what—I—have—to—say!" he would begin. "Grand—dance—at—City—Hall—to-morrow—evening—at—eight—o'clock.—Admission—fifty—cents—ladies free!—COME, ONE—COME,EVERYBODY!!"And then he would ring the bell again, and walk on.I have stopped, for the most of this chapter, to explain what kind of a town it was in which we passed the believing years, the years which began with us, and continued for a dozen summers or so. But now, if you please, we will return to that afternoon when we dashed out of school, and left Mr. Colburn and Miss Temple behind. We ran into a land of wonder. The first thing for me to learn about was that fishing trip for to-morrow.I hastily consulted Ed Mason about it. No; we could not go, it must be postponed. Parts of the necessary tackle were missing, and there were reasons, connected with the approaching Fourth of July, why neither of us desired to make any avoidable expenditures just then.But there was another plan, into which I might be admitted,—if I could prove trustworthy."You won't tell?" queried Ed Mason."Course not!""Cross your heart?"I crossed my heart and hoped I might die.But I could not know just then,—I must wait until next morning.It was fearful discipline for the soul, but I survived until after breakfast the next day. Then I presented myself at the Masons' side yard,—their house was within stone's throw of ours.Ed had, so I understood, some mysterious recipe,—some ceremony to perform that was not only extraordinary in itself, but it was to be rewarded in the most fascinating manner imaginable.He came out of the house with a serious face, led me down behind an apple tree, and there, after looking carefully about for eavesdroppers, unfolded the cryptic plot.CHAPTER IIIMAGICYou took rose-leaves—fresh rose-leaves—and mixed them with brown sugar. Then you wrapped them in a leaf from a grape-vine, and buried the whole business in the ground. You let them stay for three days. At the end of that time you dug them up and ate them; ate them with rapture known only to those who have eaten this particular delicacy. For to the natural fragrance of the rose-leaves and the nourishing and delicious properties of brown sugar, that interval of three days in the warm earth had added a new quality. A mysterious alchemy had been at work and transformed the mixture into something exquisite—adish to be envied by great kings and sultans. It had about it odors of the East; savors of Araby the blest.So said Ed Mason's older brother, Billy. And he was nearly thirteen. He did not use all the words which I have used to describe the taste of the rose-leaf compound. He had merely said it was "bully." That was enough for us—that, and the charm of the operation itself. He had tried it many times in the far-off days of his youth; and now we set out to make some for ourselves.The rose-leaves were easy to get. We had only to climb over the fence and we were in Auntie Merrill's garden. Auntie Merrill was old, and she seldom came into the garden. She had no one with whom to share it; and the roses budded, bloomed, and dropped their petals unheeded to the path. From this path we gathered some; but it is likely that otherswere induced, with little effort, to leave the full-blown flowers a day or two in advance of their natural fall.Roses are beautiful things, even to boys of eight or nine, but æsthetic considerations must give way before the stern, practical demands of life.We debated whether red or yellow roses were most likely to give good results. At last we decided to combine the two colors, and a tempting mixture they made. We put the leaves in my hat, and climbed the fence again into the Masons' back yard.The next ingredient was brown sugar. Here, again, the matter was simple. A barrel of the pleasing substance lived in a certain dim passage leading from Ed Mason's mother's pantry. It was dark, moist, and a joy forever. It had the crawly habit peculiar to brown sugar, and it came away (when questing hands wereplunged into the barrel) in lumps that filled the mouth and turned the cares of life to vanity and unimportance. With it, during hard days, we frequently restored our wasted tissues.The rose-leaves were left to themselves while we made a reconnaissance in force toward the place of the sugar barrel. The enemy (one Nora Sullivan, a desperate character) was reported as engaged in washing dishes in the kitchen. She neglected to station any outposts, so her carelessness was our advantage.We made the customary investigation for a large gray rat—supposed, since a time to which the mind of man runneth not back, to dwell behind the barrel. As usual, he was found missing.We seized the sugar and retired in discretion and stickiness to the yard. There we mixed the rose-leaves and the sugar. From the vine that grew on theside of the woodshed we picked a large leaf. This was the vine that furnished leaves to be worn inside our hats to prevent sunstroke on hot days.No one knows how many sunstrokes we escaped by means of those grape leaves.We wrapped the red and yellow petals, well covered with sugar, in the grape leaf, and secured it with straws and blades of grass. No creeping worm nor brisk beetle was to partake of this food of the gods.Next came the rite of burial. There was no doubt that the leaf and its contents must be buried in Auntie Merrill's garden. That was the scene of all mysteries, and the only place where our caché would be reasonably secure from Ed Mason's sister Louise and her friend Jessie Plummer. These were high matters, too great for the feminine intellect. Also, of course,we had Auntie Merrill to consider. A place must be discovered where she would not come poking around."Back of the lilies-of-the-valley," said Ed Mason."It's kind of wet there," I objected."What dif'rence does that make?""Well, it might not work there. I tell you: let's put 'em in the corner, near Hawkins' shed.""No; I want 'em back of the lilies-of-the-valley. It's my mother's brown sugar, and Billy told me how to do it. You wouldn't know anything 'bout it if I hadn't told you!"I succumbed to the force of this argument, and we began to excavate back of the lily bed. With shingles (procured from men who were shingling Dr. Macey's barn) we dug the pit and covered the grape leaf with earth. Then, after driving away a prowling cat (who probablyrecollected funeral services performed over deceased robins in that very garden), we climbed the fence once more and set out to endure the weary interval of three days.It was Saturday morning, and ten o'clock. Not until Tuesday at the same hour could we unearth the treasure.Billy had said so.Three days were required, no more and no less. At the end of that time, to the minute, the magic forces that dwelt in the earth would have effected the change, and what we buried as simple brown sugar and the petals of roses would come forth in a new form—a form to make epicures sigh with content.We walked up the yard, by the woodshed, past the apple tree and the clothes-jack, and out to the street. But something had happened. A thick black cloud had descended and covered us. A fewminutes before, the sun was shining gloriously, and we stood on the mountain peak of action and expectancy. Now it had all come to an end; the rose-leaves were buried, and before us in all their hideous length and tediousness stretched those three days.Three days!Three years rather! The face of the heavens was darkened and we wandered in gloom. We made an effort of cheerfulness and started for the pond with a view to catching Lucky-bugs. But we abandoned this almost immediately, and decided to hunt up Jimmy Toppan, who lived next door. Then we remembered that Jimmy had gone to his grandmother's farm in the country for the whole day. By this time the pall that overhung us had become deeper and more insufferable.We turned the corner of the street and gazed drearily at Dr. Macey's barn andthe men at work on its roof. The old shingles were coming down with a clatter, and the odor of the new ones filled the air.Perhaps there was hope in shingles!We remembered that it takes but few strokes of a jack-knife, a little cutting and boring, to convert a shingle into a boat. It only needs pointing at the bows and rounding at the stern, the insertion of a mast and the fitting of a paper sail—half an old envelope will do. The boats thus fashioned would sail half across the pond—until stuck in the lily-pads.We chose two shingles and began to whittle. But there was no salt in it. Our minds wandered, and after a few moments Ed dropped his shingle, closed his knife, and put it in his pocket."I'm goin' into the barn an' look for mice," he announced.About the chutes which let grain intothe stalls, mice were known to linger. Once I had caught one in my hands, a feat which I instantly regretted, for the mouse bit my finger and made his escape in short order. Since that time the pursuit of the common drab mouse had been considered a pastime not without the charm of danger and the risk of bloodshed. But now the mention of mice only brought my thoughts back—as if they needed bringing!—to the subject that possessed us both."Do you think you drove that old cat away?" I asked abruptly.Ed understood immediately; I did not need to specify the cat."I dunno," he said; "she may be foolin' round now. P'r'aps we ought to go and see.""Let's," I replied quickly.We crossed the street, cut across the Toppans' back yard, and then, by a certainfence route, well understood and prescribed for all important occasions, entered Auntie Merrill's garden.A cat slunk off between the box hedges, and a robin flew hurriedly from the fence to the apple tree where he had his nest of mud and dried grass. He uttered three or four excited notes as he flew.The sunlight of a morning in late June fell in patches on the paths, the hedges, and the flower beds. The rose-bushes dropped their petals, and the syringa moved in the breeze.That was a garden!It had old-fashioned flowers—snapdragons, portulacas (now in full blaze in the sun), and hollyhocks—in the days before old-fashioned flowers became new-fashioned again. Orioles hunted their food in the fruit trees to carry it back to their hanging nests in the elms that shaded the street near by. It was firefly-hauntedat night, and we used to run up and down the paths and try to catch the fireflies in our hats. It was full of long, mysterious vistas, overgrown shrubs breaking in on the paths, and valuable hiding-places. Plums grew there, and pears and cherries and peaches.When, on rare occasions, Auntie Merrill walked slowly down the path, she appeared to be totally unaware that Indians, highway robbers, pirates, cowboys, spies, scouts, and other ruffians were dogging her footsteps from bush to bush. We always thought it best to keep an eye on her.It is a perfectly safe place to-day. Auntie Merrill is dead; the shrubs are trimmed, the hedges cut down, the paths covered with asphalt, and the whole garden a dismal spectacle of precision, order, and expensive simplicity.But on the morning when we returnedto look after our buried rose-leaves, no one had dreamed of these wretched improvements. Keeping well down below the hedge, we reached the lilies-of-the-valley without encountering any opposition. The place of burial was inspected and the earth searched for tracks.None appeared.Then we stood over the spot and meditated. A lilac bush sheltered us from inquisitive persons in the house.Finally Ed Mason spoke."I wonder how they're gettin' on," he said."I wonder!" said I.Then there was another pause. I poked my foot among the lilies where we had concealed the shingles we had used as trowels. They were waiting for Tuesday morning.Ed spoke again."Let's dig 'em up and look at 'em!"Already I was fishing for the shingles. In half a minute we had brought the grape leaf once more to the light of day. We unfastened it and gazed upon its contents.It was a quarter past ten. Fifteen minutes had passed since we buried the mixture."Don't you suppose they're done?" I queried.Ed's only reply was to take a pinch between his fingers and convey it to his mouth.I did the same.Then we ate the whole lot. It tasted—and on this point I will pledge my word—it tasted exactly like rose-leaves and brown sugar!CHAPTER IVNAPOLEON JONESOn an afternoon early in the following week, Jimmy Toppan, Ed Mason, and I were seriously engaged at the frog pond. We had discovered, in the morning, an outlet, through which all the water was in danger of escaping. The town authorities seemed to have overlooked this channel, but we could not let their neglect cause public suffering.To have the pond run dry was too serious to contemplate!"The water wouldn'tallgo out," asserted Ed Mason, "'cos there's a place, back of the Court House, where there ain't any bottom.""That ain't inthispond," Jimmy corrected, "it's over in Davenport's."But Ed stuck to his opinion."Itishere. An' there was a volcano here once, an' when the volcano dried up, the pond came."We looked with considerable interest toward the site of the extinct crater. But all was placid blue water now, and whatever might be concealed beneath the surface remained a secret.Our duty was not the less clear, and we set out to build a dam that should keep in the water, volcano or no volcano, bottomless pit or not.On the terrace above us sat an old man, who watched our proceedings, chewed tobacco vigorously, and whittled small sticks. We had seen him, sitting on the same bench, in the morning. Indeed, he had been there for days, perhaps weeks, past, until he had become a fixture in the landscape.Ed Mason climbed the terrace to get another armful of stones for the dam. As he was returning, the old man called Ed to him, and offered, as a gift, a little musket whittled out of soft pine. The stones were laid down promptly, the gift accepted, and the two engaged in conversation. Jimmy and I could not hear what was being said, but we observed the incident of the little musket, and our interest in the dam waned. We went up the terrace to see if there were any more muskets to be distributed.But when we arrived, the old fellow pointed at Ed with his jack-knife, and addressed us."He wants to know if I ever was in a battle!"Evidently the question had been an absurd one. We gathered this from the tone of derision with which it was repeated, and we promptly showed our appreciationof its absurdity by grinning. We marvelled at Ed's obtuseness. Not to recognize this round-faced old man in the dark-blue suit as the very incarnation of war could only be downright stupidity."Was I ever in a battle?" he inquired with deliberate sarcasm. "Well, I don't know whatyoucall a battle, but what do you think of a hundred an' thirty guns on one hill an' eighty guns on another hill, all blazing away at each other like Sancho?"We thought well of it. It seemed to us a very respectable battle. But Ed Mason was destined to put his foot in it again. He held up the little pine musket."Guns like this?" he queried.The old fellow looked at Ed for a moment. Then he turned his gaze toward Jimmy and me and shook his head sorrowfully."No, not guns like that. Them's whatthe infantry has. A hundred an' thirty of them against eighty wouldn't be no battle. 'Twould be a squeamish. An' a darned small one at that. I meanguns. Don't you know what guns be?"Jimmy Toppan spoke."Oh, I know! Cannons. Like the one they fired last Fourth of July, down at the foot of River Street.""Yes, that's the kind, I guess. I wa'n't there. Dave Hunt was doin' that. I see in the paper they called him 'Gunner David Hunt.' I nearly bust over that. 'Gunner David Hunt'!"He rocked forward and back on the bench, chuckling and repeating, "GunnerDavid Hunt!" from time to time."Why, where do you think he was durin' the whole war?"We could not imagine."Down in Boston Harbor—that'swhere he was. Why, he never smelled powder in his life!"This seemed extraordinary to me. I had seen "Gunner David Hunt" on that Fourth of July, and if he hadn't smelled powder that day, he must have been suffering with a fearful cold. I had smelled it distinctly; even kept, as I was, at a discreet distance. For Mr. Hunt, working with the greatest activity in the midst of clouds of smoke, not to have detected the odor struck me as amazing. I was incautious enough to point out my impressions to the old fellow in blue.He rewarded me with another such look of scorn as that with which he greeted Ed's mistake about the guns."He never smelled powder, I tell yer. That means he never heard a shot fired in anger. He may have fired some of them guns down in that fort in Boston Harbor, at a hogshead floatin' in the water,jus' for practice. But he never stood up against the enemy an' give 'em back shot for shot. An' the paper called him 'GunnerHunt'! Oh, my Chris'mas!"He rocked forward and back again, and laughed long and heartily. As it seemed to be the proper thing to do, all three of us laughed, as well as we could, over the presumption of Mr. Hunt.Then the soldier became serious. He took his walking-stick, held it out at arm's length, and pointed across the pond."Do you see that Court House over there?"As it was the most prominent object in the landscape, and hardly one hundred yards distant, we instantly admitted that we did see it."An' do you see George Washin'ton over to the right?"Yes; George Washington was plainlyvisible. There he stood, on his pedestal, with his arm stretched out at his side, as if to smack any small boy who walked on the grass."Well, over beyond George Washin'ton was where the enemy's batteries lay—they stretched from there up to Joe Peabody's house.""When was this?"We all spoke at once, and in great excitement.Enemy's batterieson Elm Street!The old man looked at us solemnly, and chewed with great deliberation."That's to give you an idea how they lay on the field. This is on a small scale, you see. Our guns were right along this bank, from here to the fourth tree. No, the fifth. And that graveyard back there," he turned around and pointed, "was 'bout in the same position, only it run down nearer where we are now. Down therewhere the pond is, was near a mile of open—wheat-fields and so on. Everything was mighty quiet 'bout the middle of the morning, 'cos we'd been fightin' for two days, you see. We could see the rebels plain enough, an' knew they was up to some deviltry. But we knew the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte had his eye on 'em all right."Napoleon Bonaparte! Our eyes opened at this. "Was Napoleon Bonaparte in this battle?" I asked."Washe?" returned the soldier, with great energy. "I guess he come pretty near bein'. He was in command of the whole army. Who did yer think was, excep' him?"I had not given the matter much thought. But I replied weakly that I supposed Napoleon had lived in France."You did? Well, you got that out of a book, I s'pose?"I admitted, with some embarrassment, that I did get it from a book."I thought so. Well, if you're so smart with your books, why don't you tell this instead of me? P'r'aps you was in this battle, hey?"My face became uncomfortably warm. I could not think of anything to say. After waiting a little, the soldier continued."If this young feller, that knows so all-fired much, ain't goin' to tell us how this battle was fought, I might as well go on. As I says before, we could see their guns, an' we could see the rebels movin' about 'round 'em. Some of their guns was in a little patch of woods, over where that team is standin' now. It kep' on quiet for more'n two hours—no one firin' a shot. Then we see the rebels was gettin' ready. They moved some of their batteries. An' then the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparterode up to me on his white hoss, an' he says, 'Bring out yer guns!' An' so I brought 'em out!"My doubts vanished. That white horse was conclusive.Ed Mason spoke in an awed voice:—"What did you say?""What did I say? I says, 'All right, yer Majesty.' An' I fetched the guns round to the northwestward.""What did Napoleon do then?" asked Ed."What did he do? He just sat there on his white hoss an' he watched to see if we did it all right. An' we lined 'em up smart, an' unlimbered, an' back went the hosses, an' there we was, all ready in no time. The Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte he says, 'First-rate, boys; you did that slick as grease!'""An' then the rebels let off two guns for a signal, an' then their whole hundredan' thirty began to once, an' so did our eighty. An' that kep' up for an hour.""Did any of their shots hit you?" inquired Jimmy."Not to speak of. They fired too high. Their shells went plumb over our heads, an' over the infantry, who was lyin' on the ground behind us, an' bust in the cemetary. Some of the gravestones was broke. Some of our men was killed when the caissons blew up."We had no idea what caissons were; but they blew up—that was enough for us."Then the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte ordered us to cease firin', one battery at a time. That was where he was foxy. He wanted to make the rebels think our guns had been dismounted, or that we was out of ammunition, so's they would charge. And he fooled 'em, sure enough, for pretty soon they did charge!"He paused, and bit off some more tobacco, while we jumped up and down with excitement. Then he pointed again with his cane."Do you see them three trees to the left of the white house? Well, bearin' a little to the right of them is a clump of bushes. There was some woods at that p'int of the enemy's position, an' they come outer them. We could see 'em plain as day, a long line of infantry, an' the officers on hosses. Some of 'em was in gray uniforms, but not all. We could see their flags, an' the sun shinin' on the bayonets. First one long line come, an' then another, an' then another. There was close to fifteen thousand of 'em—more than all the folks in this town!"We followed his gaze across the pond, across the mall, to that clump of bushes. At any moment we expected to see thegray-clad lines break out from behind them and start toward us with loud yells. But we had forgotten how securely we were planted behind the old man's batteries."It didn't take us a minute to open on 'em. We had our guns trained in no time, an' we made it mighty hot for 'em as they come across that valley. One bunch come right for my guns, but we had loaded with grape an' we just blew 'em to smithereens. They turned round, what was left of 'em, an' run back like Jesse. There was a rebel general on a brown hoss, an' his hoss went down, an' we nearly gothim."He stopped. After waiting a moment, we all burst out:—"What happened then?""Why, nothin'. The battle was over. The rebels had skedaddled. But the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, he calledme 'round to his tent that night, an' he give me this cane.""What,thatone?""This one. He says, says he: 'I like the way you worked your guns to-day, an' I want you to keep this stick to remember me by. I cut it myself.'"He let each boy of us take the stick in his hand and examine it reverently. It was a cane of some brown wood, with a round knob at the top, made of ivory or bone.Then he took a fat silver watch out of his pocket, and looked at that."It's pretty nigh supper-time, an' I'm goin' along."He rose from the bench and walked slowly away, limping slightly, and leaning on the cane—the cane that Napoleon had given him!We walked toward our homes, maintaining a profound silence. On the otherside of the pond we met Rob Currier, who was catching hornpouts. He addressed us derisively."Was that old Napoleon Jones you were talking with? He been giving you some of his yarns? My father says he's cracked. He was in the Civil War, but some one got him all worked up about Napoleon, till he thinks he has seen him."If Rob had hit each one of us in the face with a wet hornpout, the effect would have been more agreeable. We encountered a realist for the first time when we met Rob that afternoon. We were walking through a golden haze of romance, when he suddenly drew this leaden-gray cloud across the sky."You make me sick!" declared Ed Mason; "didn't he show us the very cane that Napoleon gave him?""Of course he did!" replied Jimmy Toppan.And "Of course he did!" I chimed in.So we fell on Rob Currier, dragged him down on the turf, and stuffed grass and clover down the back of his neck until he yelled:—"I take it all back!"Then we let him up.

THE BELIEVING YEARSTHE MACMILLAN COMPANYNEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGOSAN FRANCISCOMACMILLAN & CO., LimitedLONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTAMELBOURNETHE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.TORONTOTHE BELIEVING YEARSBYEDMUND LESTER PEARSONNew YorkTHE MACMILLAN COMPANY1911All rights reservedCopyright, 1910,By THE OUTLOOK COMPANY.Copyright, 1911,By THE OUTLOOK COMPANY.Copyright, 1911,By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1911.Norwood PressJ. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.ToEDMUND CARLTON PEARSON(1841-1897)"E'en as he trod that day to God so walked he from his birth,In simpleness and gentleness and honor and clean mirth."NOTEA number of the incidents described in this book have been used in a series of stories published inThe Outlook. To The Outlook Company my thanks are due for their courteous permission to retell these stories in an altered form.E. L. P.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANYNEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGOSAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., LimitedLONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTAMELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.TORONTO

THE BELIEVING YEARS

BY

EDMUND LESTER PEARSON

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1911

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1910,

By THE OUTLOOK COMPANY.

Copyright, 1911,

By THE OUTLOOK COMPANY.

Copyright, 1911,

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1911.

Norwood PressJ. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

To

EDMUND CARLTON PEARSON(1841-1897)

"E'en as he trod that day to God so walked he from his birth,In simpleness and gentleness and honor and clean mirth."

A number of the incidents described in this book have been used in a series of stories published inThe Outlook. To The Outlook Company my thanks are due for their courteous permission to retell these stories in an altered form.

E. L. P.

CONTENTSCHAPTERPAGEI.Mr. Colburn1II.The Old Town12III.Magic26IV.Napoleon Jones40V.A Run on the Bank57VI.Horace71VII.The Great Day82VIII.The Green Chest98IX.White Peacocks113X.The Flight130XI.Up Like a Rocket147XII.Susy160XIII.Arma Puerumque Cano177XIV.When My Ship Comes In195XV.The Lucky-Bug209XVI.West Injy Lane223XVII.Their Unaccountable Behavior240XVIII.The Siege of Auntie Merrill256XIX.Entertaining Alice269XX.While the Evil Days Come Not282

THE BELIEVING YEARSCHAPTER IMR. COLBURNEach boy in the school-room had fixed his mind on two objects: the calendar and the clock. On the former stood out in big black charactersJune20The clock pointed to the hour of three. Exactly sixty minutes separated us from vacation. It was the day of our dreams,—the last day of school.We had thought of it, thought of it far back when snow still covered the ground; planned for it, lived in hope of it. To-morrow the tyrannical bell should besilent, and no one could say: "Time to start for school!"Many forces had been at work hurrying this day forward: the first blades of grass, the first leaves on the horse-chestnut trees, the first robin who ran across the grass-plots overlooking the frog pond, the first dandelion that gleamed in the grass. All were signs and symbols of it.But in spite of so many omens, the day itself had been outrageously slow to arrive. The robins had abated the enthusiasm of the first few weeks, and become quieter. They were sober householders and family men, now. The golden blossoms of the dandelions were transformed into that shape in which they are useful chiefly to blow upon three times to see at what o'clock your mother wants you. The season had arrived for swimming,—indeed, it had been here for weeks,—Ed Mason and Rob Currier claimed tohave gone in swimming at Four Rocks as early as the last day of April. The fish in Little River needed our careful attention. And in front of Austin's shop had long stood a sign displaying a pink pyramid with a spoon stuck therein, and the seductive words "Ice Cream," a spectacle that made our Fourth of July money stir uneasily in our pockets.In short, all the elements of vacation were here,—all but the thing itself. Each morning the summons came at twenty minutes of nine, and each morning we trod the dismal path. Pencils squeaked, and slaty smells arose as the slates were covered with figures and then cleaned with damp sponges. The pungent odor of cedar, from newly sharpened lead-pencils, mingled with the fragrance of pickled limes,—smuggled into school and eaten contrary to the orders of Miss Temple, the teacher. Outside, summercalled us in a dozen different ways. And, uneasy prisoners, we chafed and wriggled in our seats.But, somehow, the days had dragged by, and even this final one had nearly gone. At the last moment, when our release was so near at hand, a dismal spectre arose before us to block the way. It was the forbidding form of Mr. Colburn.This was a man who had written an arithmetic,—an arithmetic of singular and diabolical ingenuity. He had done this thing long before any of us were born, and then he had passed from the earth. But his work had remained to annoy us. Occasionally, during the last hour of the afternoon session, we wrestled with Mr. Colburn, by request. This was in addition to the regular arithmetic lesson in the morning.I conceived Mr. Colburn as a tall,spare man, clad in brown leather. His face was brown and leathery, too, and it was puckered and sour. In one hand he held his famous book,—in the other, a big switch. He was full of impertinent curiosity, was Mr. Colburn, and he had no manner of interest in the things that really concerned us.I wanted to know if Ed Mason (whose seat was next but one behind mine) were going fishing to-morrow morning. Mr. Colburn wanted to know if 3 fifths of a chaldron of coal cost 8 dollars, what is the whole chaldron worth?I did not care what it was worth, I did not know what a chaldron was, anyway,—and I have never found out. But I saw we were in for an uncomfortable hour as soon as Miss Temple said:"Take your Colburn's Arithmetics and sit up straight in your seats.... Robert, did you throw that? Well, you may goand stand in that corner, with your face to the wall."Rob Currier did as he was directed with undisguised delight. By one skilful stroke he had put himself beyond the clutch of Mr. Colburn. The rest of us looked upon him with envy,—if we had only been so inspired!It was base of Miss Temple to devote the last hour of school to Colburn's Arithmetic. We thought regretfully of another teacher we had once had. She would have read to us the adventures of "The Prince and the Pauper," and that was altogether better than fretting us about the price of coal. Never in my life have I wished to know the worth of a chaldron of coal, but if ever I have such a wish doubtless the dealer will tell me straight out.But that was not the way with the people Mr. Colburn knew,—they couldnever give you a decent answer about anything. If you asked one of Mr. Colburn's friends the price of his horse, he would reply that the horse and the saddle together were worth 100 dollars, but the horse was worth 9 times as much as the saddle,—and that was all you could get out of him.For my part, I privately resolved never to buy horses of any such disagreeable folk,—a resolution which I have faithfully kept.Miss Temple must have observed my anxiety to speak with Ed Mason, for she promptly called upon me:—"Samuel, you may take Question 61. Read it.""'A man bought 1 ton and 4 fifths of a ton of fustic for 43 dollars, what was that a ton?'"I struggled with it for a few moments, vaguely wondering what fustic might be,but in the end I was compelled to say that I did not know. Jimmy Toppan and Charley Carter both fell victims to the question. It was finally answered, with some help from Miss Temple, by Joe Carter. The answer did not seem very interesting to us, after it had been found and worked out on the blackboard.We were watching the clock.Mr. Colburn would not have cared for clocks,—unless, indeed, he could have made up some hateful question about them. He did not care for our fishing trips; he had no interest in the frog pond and its creatures. The warm, summer day outside had no attraction for him.He wanted to know if cloth 4 quarters wide is worth 8 dollars a yard, what is 1 yard of the same kind of cloth, that is 5 quarters wide, worth? And his conspirator, Miss Temple, aided and abetted him in his curiosity. She fired the questionsat us with unremitting vigor. We were called upon to reduce 9-4/7 to an improper fraction, though how any one could wish to inject into it any more impropriety than it already seemed to possess, was a matter impossible to understand.The long hour wore on. From outside came the drone of insects. A flock of sheep passed the school,—driven up Elm Street by men who were probably hurrying them to their fate. We tried to look out the windows and watch the progress of the sheep, but we were recalled by Miss Temple, to whom the incident suggested nothing except a chance to try upon us what Mr. Colburn seems to have considered his crowning effort."A man driving his geese to market was met by another, who said, Good morrow, master, with your hundred geese; says he, I have not a hundred; but if I had half as many more as I now have,and two geese and a half, I should have a hundred; how many had he?"Disheartening as this problem appeared, together with its inhuman suggestion of a man carrying half of a goose about with him, it nevertheless proved useful to us. Joe Carter and one or two others (who affected to enjoy Mr. Colburn) engaged in a long wrangle with each other and with Miss Temple, about the number of geese owned by this palpable lunatic. We regarded them, at first, with a pity not unmixed with loathing; then, as we observed how they were taking up the time, we came to appreciate the value of the discussion. Ed Mason and Jimmy Toppan, from the depths of a complete ignorance of the subject, managed to interject one or two inquiries that had the happy result of tangling every one up still worse, and thus prolonging the goose argument.To our great joy the problem was still unsolved at five minutes of four. Then Miss Temple was forced to bid us close the books. She made a few perfunctory remarks, wished us a pleasant vacation, and, when a gong sounded throughout the building, dismissed the class.We filed to get our hats, filed downstairs, through the hall, and out the door with a concerted and enthusiastic yell. Mr. Colburn and imprisonment lay behind us; ahead were vacation and freedom. So we whooped once more, and again, until a scissors-grinder, who had gone to sleep on the grass under a tree, woke up with a start. The old horse who drew Oliver's bakery wagon had been standing sleepily in front of a house on the other side of Elm Street. At our third shout he ambled clumsily off, while Mr. Oliver, with a basket of buns in his hand, pursued him down the street.

THE BELIEVING YEARS

MR. COLBURN

Each boy in the school-room had fixed his mind on two objects: the calendar and the clock. On the former stood out in big black characters

June20

The clock pointed to the hour of three. Exactly sixty minutes separated us from vacation. It was the day of our dreams,—the last day of school.

We had thought of it, thought of it far back when snow still covered the ground; planned for it, lived in hope of it. To-morrow the tyrannical bell should besilent, and no one could say: "Time to start for school!"

Many forces had been at work hurrying this day forward: the first blades of grass, the first leaves on the horse-chestnut trees, the first robin who ran across the grass-plots overlooking the frog pond, the first dandelion that gleamed in the grass. All were signs and symbols of it.

But in spite of so many omens, the day itself had been outrageously slow to arrive. The robins had abated the enthusiasm of the first few weeks, and become quieter. They were sober householders and family men, now. The golden blossoms of the dandelions were transformed into that shape in which they are useful chiefly to blow upon three times to see at what o'clock your mother wants you. The season had arrived for swimming,—indeed, it had been here for weeks,—Ed Mason and Rob Currier claimed tohave gone in swimming at Four Rocks as early as the last day of April. The fish in Little River needed our careful attention. And in front of Austin's shop had long stood a sign displaying a pink pyramid with a spoon stuck therein, and the seductive words "Ice Cream," a spectacle that made our Fourth of July money stir uneasily in our pockets.

In short, all the elements of vacation were here,—all but the thing itself. Each morning the summons came at twenty minutes of nine, and each morning we trod the dismal path. Pencils squeaked, and slaty smells arose as the slates were covered with figures and then cleaned with damp sponges. The pungent odor of cedar, from newly sharpened lead-pencils, mingled with the fragrance of pickled limes,—smuggled into school and eaten contrary to the orders of Miss Temple, the teacher. Outside, summercalled us in a dozen different ways. And, uneasy prisoners, we chafed and wriggled in our seats.

But, somehow, the days had dragged by, and even this final one had nearly gone. At the last moment, when our release was so near at hand, a dismal spectre arose before us to block the way. It was the forbidding form of Mr. Colburn.

This was a man who had written an arithmetic,—an arithmetic of singular and diabolical ingenuity. He had done this thing long before any of us were born, and then he had passed from the earth. But his work had remained to annoy us. Occasionally, during the last hour of the afternoon session, we wrestled with Mr. Colburn, by request. This was in addition to the regular arithmetic lesson in the morning.

I conceived Mr. Colburn as a tall,spare man, clad in brown leather. His face was brown and leathery, too, and it was puckered and sour. In one hand he held his famous book,—in the other, a big switch. He was full of impertinent curiosity, was Mr. Colburn, and he had no manner of interest in the things that really concerned us.

I wanted to know if Ed Mason (whose seat was next but one behind mine) were going fishing to-morrow morning. Mr. Colburn wanted to know if 3 fifths of a chaldron of coal cost 8 dollars, what is the whole chaldron worth?

I did not care what it was worth, I did not know what a chaldron was, anyway,—and I have never found out. But I saw we were in for an uncomfortable hour as soon as Miss Temple said:

"Take your Colburn's Arithmetics and sit up straight in your seats.... Robert, did you throw that? Well, you may goand stand in that corner, with your face to the wall."

Rob Currier did as he was directed with undisguised delight. By one skilful stroke he had put himself beyond the clutch of Mr. Colburn. The rest of us looked upon him with envy,—if we had only been so inspired!

It was base of Miss Temple to devote the last hour of school to Colburn's Arithmetic. We thought regretfully of another teacher we had once had. She would have read to us the adventures of "The Prince and the Pauper," and that was altogether better than fretting us about the price of coal. Never in my life have I wished to know the worth of a chaldron of coal, but if ever I have such a wish doubtless the dealer will tell me straight out.

But that was not the way with the people Mr. Colburn knew,—they couldnever give you a decent answer about anything. If you asked one of Mr. Colburn's friends the price of his horse, he would reply that the horse and the saddle together were worth 100 dollars, but the horse was worth 9 times as much as the saddle,—and that was all you could get out of him.

For my part, I privately resolved never to buy horses of any such disagreeable folk,—a resolution which I have faithfully kept.

Miss Temple must have observed my anxiety to speak with Ed Mason, for she promptly called upon me:—

"Samuel, you may take Question 61. Read it."

"'A man bought 1 ton and 4 fifths of a ton of fustic for 43 dollars, what was that a ton?'"

I struggled with it for a few moments, vaguely wondering what fustic might be,but in the end I was compelled to say that I did not know. Jimmy Toppan and Charley Carter both fell victims to the question. It was finally answered, with some help from Miss Temple, by Joe Carter. The answer did not seem very interesting to us, after it had been found and worked out on the blackboard.

We were watching the clock.

Mr. Colburn would not have cared for clocks,—unless, indeed, he could have made up some hateful question about them. He did not care for our fishing trips; he had no interest in the frog pond and its creatures. The warm, summer day outside had no attraction for him.

He wanted to know if cloth 4 quarters wide is worth 8 dollars a yard, what is 1 yard of the same kind of cloth, that is 5 quarters wide, worth? And his conspirator, Miss Temple, aided and abetted him in his curiosity. She fired the questionsat us with unremitting vigor. We were called upon to reduce 9-4/7 to an improper fraction, though how any one could wish to inject into it any more impropriety than it already seemed to possess, was a matter impossible to understand.

The long hour wore on. From outside came the drone of insects. A flock of sheep passed the school,—driven up Elm Street by men who were probably hurrying them to their fate. We tried to look out the windows and watch the progress of the sheep, but we were recalled by Miss Temple, to whom the incident suggested nothing except a chance to try upon us what Mr. Colburn seems to have considered his crowning effort.

"A man driving his geese to market was met by another, who said, Good morrow, master, with your hundred geese; says he, I have not a hundred; but if I had half as many more as I now have,and two geese and a half, I should have a hundred; how many had he?"

Disheartening as this problem appeared, together with its inhuman suggestion of a man carrying half of a goose about with him, it nevertheless proved useful to us. Joe Carter and one or two others (who affected to enjoy Mr. Colburn) engaged in a long wrangle with each other and with Miss Temple, about the number of geese owned by this palpable lunatic. We regarded them, at first, with a pity not unmixed with loathing; then, as we observed how they were taking up the time, we came to appreciate the value of the discussion. Ed Mason and Jimmy Toppan, from the depths of a complete ignorance of the subject, managed to interject one or two inquiries that had the happy result of tangling every one up still worse, and thus prolonging the goose argument.

To our great joy the problem was still unsolved at five minutes of four. Then Miss Temple was forced to bid us close the books. She made a few perfunctory remarks, wished us a pleasant vacation, and, when a gong sounded throughout the building, dismissed the class.

We filed to get our hats, filed downstairs, through the hall, and out the door with a concerted and enthusiastic yell. Mr. Colburn and imprisonment lay behind us; ahead were vacation and freedom. So we whooped once more, and again, until a scissors-grinder, who had gone to sleep on the grass under a tree, woke up with a start. The old horse who drew Oliver's bakery wagon had been standing sleepily in front of a house on the other side of Elm Street. At our third shout he ambled clumsily off, while Mr. Oliver, with a basket of buns in his hand, pursued him down the street.

CHAPTER IITHE OLD TOWNElm Street, into which we rushed that afternoon, was a broad thoroughfare extending from one end of the town to the other. On both sides it was lined with trees, set at the edge of the brick sidewalks. Mainly fine tall elms, they lent a distinction to the street and made it notable among those which characterize the older towns of New England. In the opinion of all the citizens, Elm Street was beyond comparison.Local pride did not exaggerate. Its unusual length, its great, graceful trees and the dignified houses, made the street undoubtedly beautiful. There were houses of every style which has been invogue during two hundred years. Roofs which sloped in the rear nearly to the ground, gambrel roofs, and the various less attractive fashions of the nineteenth century,—all were there.But those of which the owners were most proud, those best suited to the street, were the great, square, three-storied houses, built in the early years of the century. That was the time of the town's prosperity, before a fire had checked its growth, before shifting sands had almost closed its harbor. Ships from the old town sailed every ocean then, and carried our flag into strange, foreign ports. Their captains, or their owners, built many of the big, square houses, so you could often see, on the roof, a little railed platform, where the householder might stand of a morning to sweep the harbor and the ocean with his spy-glass. Charley Carter's father did this regularly,although the ships in which he was interested sailed to this port no longer, if, indeed, they sailed at all.The town was built along one bank of the river, and Elm Street followed the crest of the slope. It was an easy thing, therefore, for any one standing on the roof of one of the houses to get a good view of the river, the salt marshes, the sand-dunes, and the ocean. The ocean spread out there, bright and clear, from the dim blue mountain that rose on the far horizon in Maine, to the low hills of Cape Ann. Sometimes, at night, the east wind brought the rumble of breakers, or the booming sound of a whistling buoy that guarded the harbor.The town was long and very narrow. From Elm Street you could look down some of the cross streets to the river, and beyond. On the other side of Elm Street, as soon as you had passed the gardensthat lay behind the big houses, you were almost in open country. There were a few outlying farms, a few shanties, and then bare, scrubby fields, the Common Pasture, rocky knolls and clumps of woods. On one of these farms dwelt Mr. Diggery,—a fierce little man, of whom we went in terror.So near did the river come to the lower part of the town that a storm often made people who lived in that quarter need high boots to get across the street; while the country (unexplored wilds to us!) closed up so near on the other side of Elm Street, that owls, woodchucks, and an occasional fox penetrated the gardens.It was this nearness of the river and ocean, and of the open country, that made the town such a delightful dwelling-place for us. Even the centre of the town, the neighborhood where Ed Mason and Jimmy Toppan lived, and Rob Currier,the two Carters, Horace Winslow, Peter Bailey, and I,—this was a region thick with the possibilities of adventure. Much of this centred about the frog pond and the Mall. The pond was full of goldfish, and other humbler fish, and toads, frogs, and water-beetles. You were sure to find something interesting whenever you walked around the pond. Many of our neighbors on Elm Street owned large gardens, to which we had entrance—either by permission, or by the informal and far more adventurous method of climbing the back fence.The owners of the gardens, at that period, were mostly elderly persons, dwelling in great contentment and the most profound quiet. Their lives were comfortable, well-ordered, and precise. They lived mainly in the past. They pondered much on some grandfather, or great-grandfather, who had built up afortune through foreign trade, and they heeded not at all the remarks of envious and ill-natured folk who liked to point out that one of the chief commodities of this trade was rum. The principal hallmark of their respectability was a portrait of their ancestor, with very pink cheeks,—the sign of an outdoor life, and not necessarily an indication of a taste for port and madeira.Beside this venerable portrait would hang a lively representation of the shipSally B., as she appeared on some memorable occasion entering the harbor of Singapore, and viewed by one of those artists who invariably happen to be near by when the ship is under full sail and making not less than twelve knots.It was a period not so very far removed from our own time, and yet different from it in a number of respects. No thumping, grinding trolley car disturbed thequiet of Elm Street that bright June afternoon. Infrequently, an omnibus rambled up and down. By night the darkness was punctuated here and there by a gas flame at the top of an iron lamp post. Rob Currier's big brother Dick had the proud privilege of going about our neighborhood at sunset, with a ladder and a supply of matches, to set these lamps alight. We used to watch him, and wonder if we should ever get old enough and sufficiently influential to occupy a public position like his. But before we reached the required age and dignity the old lamp-posts had been taken down in favor of electric lights.No one had his letters brought to his house. If he wanted his mail, or wished to send a letter, he went to the post-office. The nine o'clock parade of citizens making toward that building was one of the regular features of life in the town.At nine in the evening a church bell rang the curfew,—although it had absolutely no significance. It had always been done: that was reason sufficient for an old and conservative place. When the ringer died, or something else happened to stop its mournful sound, a well-to-do citizen quickly provided funds to continue the ringing. The curfew laws, with their reference to children, had not come into vogue, so the bell sounded each evening simply out of regard for an old custom. Few heard it, and to few of these did it make the slightest difference.We did not often hear foreign tongues or see foreign faces on the streets. Once in a while we might overhear two old women, with shawls over their heads, conversing in Irish as they passed along. The Mediterranean peoples had not arrived,—although they had sent a pioneer in the person of Mr. Mazzoni, who presidedover a little stand at the foot of Main Street, and was an important personage to us, because of the peanuts which he sold.The boys who went to the parochial school, the Pats and Mikes, were a kind of hostile crew, and when we met it was usually with an exchange of horse-chestnuts or snowballs. This was because of no racial or religious animosity,—we were simply two rival gangs, that was all. On one occasion, when Ed Mason and I met a number of the parochial school boys out in the country, there was an exchange of epithets that stopped (as such meetings did not always stop) this side of blows. I was reduced to a state of almost tearful indignation when one of the little Irish boys asserted that I was "a Protestant."I denied the charge vehemently, but when I got home and repeated the insult,I learned that it was only too true. I had never suspected it, and had gone on thinking that I was merely a Unitarian. Alas, it seemed that I was a Protestant as well.The charm and quaintness of the past had by no means vanished from the old town. Wooden ships were still built on the river, now and then, and the sea-captains gathered and gossiped in the rooms of the Marine Society. Overhead was a museum of curiosities of the deep, and of foreign lands. Some one of the captains would always be willing to unlock the room for us, and let us inspect the dusty albatross, the dried flying-fishes, the little ships in bottles, and all the other objects of interest.One grocery, still displayed the sign "E. & W. I. Goods," and more than one citizen walked the streets in a beaver hat. There was old fat Captain Millett,who tacked down Main Street every morning in summer under an enormous green-lined umbrella, big enough to shelter a family. There was Captain Bannister, who lived alone in his curious little house on West Injy Lane, where he cultivated a garden patch of cinnamon pinks. And there was Mr. Babbitt, the Quaker gentleman, who used to pass with stately tread, as we played on Elm Street, or about the pond. He was tall and dignified, and he wore a high hat and a frock coat,—I had almost said a surtout,—with a shirt collar so high and antiquated that he seemed to belong to the time of Martin Van Buren. He kept on his black velvet ear-caps until summer was well advanced, and he put them on again the first of September. But he was the friend of a great poet, and every one respected him for that, as well as for his own character.There was still a town crier,—one of the last, or, as he claimed, the very last one in this country. "Squawboo" (as we were told we must not call him), or Mr. Landford (as we were told we ought to call him), walked the streets with a large dinner bell. He would pause at intervals, and ring his bell vigorously. Then, throwing back his head, he would emit a volume of sound which would strike the hearer with astonishment. I have seen strangers paralyzed with amazement as they heard for the first time, and unexpectedly, the deep, tremendous tones that issued from his throat."Hear—what—I—have—to—say!" he would begin. "Grand—dance—at—City—Hall—to-morrow—evening—at—eight—o'clock.—Admission—fifty—cents—ladies free!—COME, ONE—COME,EVERYBODY!!"And then he would ring the bell again, and walk on.I have stopped, for the most of this chapter, to explain what kind of a town it was in which we passed the believing years, the years which began with us, and continued for a dozen summers or so. But now, if you please, we will return to that afternoon when we dashed out of school, and left Mr. Colburn and Miss Temple behind. We ran into a land of wonder. The first thing for me to learn about was that fishing trip for to-morrow.I hastily consulted Ed Mason about it. No; we could not go, it must be postponed. Parts of the necessary tackle were missing, and there were reasons, connected with the approaching Fourth of July, why neither of us desired to make any avoidable expenditures just then.But there was another plan, into which I might be admitted,—if I could prove trustworthy."You won't tell?" queried Ed Mason."Course not!""Cross your heart?"I crossed my heart and hoped I might die.But I could not know just then,—I must wait until next morning.It was fearful discipline for the soul, but I survived until after breakfast the next day. Then I presented myself at the Masons' side yard,—their house was within stone's throw of ours.Ed had, so I understood, some mysterious recipe,—some ceremony to perform that was not only extraordinary in itself, but it was to be rewarded in the most fascinating manner imaginable.He came out of the house with a serious face, led me down behind an apple tree, and there, after looking carefully about for eavesdroppers, unfolded the cryptic plot.

THE OLD TOWN

Elm Street, into which we rushed that afternoon, was a broad thoroughfare extending from one end of the town to the other. On both sides it was lined with trees, set at the edge of the brick sidewalks. Mainly fine tall elms, they lent a distinction to the street and made it notable among those which characterize the older towns of New England. In the opinion of all the citizens, Elm Street was beyond comparison.

Local pride did not exaggerate. Its unusual length, its great, graceful trees and the dignified houses, made the street undoubtedly beautiful. There were houses of every style which has been invogue during two hundred years. Roofs which sloped in the rear nearly to the ground, gambrel roofs, and the various less attractive fashions of the nineteenth century,—all were there.

But those of which the owners were most proud, those best suited to the street, were the great, square, three-storied houses, built in the early years of the century. That was the time of the town's prosperity, before a fire had checked its growth, before shifting sands had almost closed its harbor. Ships from the old town sailed every ocean then, and carried our flag into strange, foreign ports. Their captains, or their owners, built many of the big, square houses, so you could often see, on the roof, a little railed platform, where the householder might stand of a morning to sweep the harbor and the ocean with his spy-glass. Charley Carter's father did this regularly,although the ships in which he was interested sailed to this port no longer, if, indeed, they sailed at all.

The town was built along one bank of the river, and Elm Street followed the crest of the slope. It was an easy thing, therefore, for any one standing on the roof of one of the houses to get a good view of the river, the salt marshes, the sand-dunes, and the ocean. The ocean spread out there, bright and clear, from the dim blue mountain that rose on the far horizon in Maine, to the low hills of Cape Ann. Sometimes, at night, the east wind brought the rumble of breakers, or the booming sound of a whistling buoy that guarded the harbor.

The town was long and very narrow. From Elm Street you could look down some of the cross streets to the river, and beyond. On the other side of Elm Street, as soon as you had passed the gardensthat lay behind the big houses, you were almost in open country. There were a few outlying farms, a few shanties, and then bare, scrubby fields, the Common Pasture, rocky knolls and clumps of woods. On one of these farms dwelt Mr. Diggery,—a fierce little man, of whom we went in terror.

So near did the river come to the lower part of the town that a storm often made people who lived in that quarter need high boots to get across the street; while the country (unexplored wilds to us!) closed up so near on the other side of Elm Street, that owls, woodchucks, and an occasional fox penetrated the gardens.

It was this nearness of the river and ocean, and of the open country, that made the town such a delightful dwelling-place for us. Even the centre of the town, the neighborhood where Ed Mason and Jimmy Toppan lived, and Rob Currier,the two Carters, Horace Winslow, Peter Bailey, and I,—this was a region thick with the possibilities of adventure. Much of this centred about the frog pond and the Mall. The pond was full of goldfish, and other humbler fish, and toads, frogs, and water-beetles. You were sure to find something interesting whenever you walked around the pond. Many of our neighbors on Elm Street owned large gardens, to which we had entrance—either by permission, or by the informal and far more adventurous method of climbing the back fence.

The owners of the gardens, at that period, were mostly elderly persons, dwelling in great contentment and the most profound quiet. Their lives were comfortable, well-ordered, and precise. They lived mainly in the past. They pondered much on some grandfather, or great-grandfather, who had built up afortune through foreign trade, and they heeded not at all the remarks of envious and ill-natured folk who liked to point out that one of the chief commodities of this trade was rum. The principal hallmark of their respectability was a portrait of their ancestor, with very pink cheeks,—the sign of an outdoor life, and not necessarily an indication of a taste for port and madeira.

Beside this venerable portrait would hang a lively representation of the shipSally B., as she appeared on some memorable occasion entering the harbor of Singapore, and viewed by one of those artists who invariably happen to be near by when the ship is under full sail and making not less than twelve knots.

It was a period not so very far removed from our own time, and yet different from it in a number of respects. No thumping, grinding trolley car disturbed thequiet of Elm Street that bright June afternoon. Infrequently, an omnibus rambled up and down. By night the darkness was punctuated here and there by a gas flame at the top of an iron lamp post. Rob Currier's big brother Dick had the proud privilege of going about our neighborhood at sunset, with a ladder and a supply of matches, to set these lamps alight. We used to watch him, and wonder if we should ever get old enough and sufficiently influential to occupy a public position like his. But before we reached the required age and dignity the old lamp-posts had been taken down in favor of electric lights.

No one had his letters brought to his house. If he wanted his mail, or wished to send a letter, he went to the post-office. The nine o'clock parade of citizens making toward that building was one of the regular features of life in the town.At nine in the evening a church bell rang the curfew,—although it had absolutely no significance. It had always been done: that was reason sufficient for an old and conservative place. When the ringer died, or something else happened to stop its mournful sound, a well-to-do citizen quickly provided funds to continue the ringing. The curfew laws, with their reference to children, had not come into vogue, so the bell sounded each evening simply out of regard for an old custom. Few heard it, and to few of these did it make the slightest difference.

We did not often hear foreign tongues or see foreign faces on the streets. Once in a while we might overhear two old women, with shawls over their heads, conversing in Irish as they passed along. The Mediterranean peoples had not arrived,—although they had sent a pioneer in the person of Mr. Mazzoni, who presidedover a little stand at the foot of Main Street, and was an important personage to us, because of the peanuts which he sold.

The boys who went to the parochial school, the Pats and Mikes, were a kind of hostile crew, and when we met it was usually with an exchange of horse-chestnuts or snowballs. This was because of no racial or religious animosity,—we were simply two rival gangs, that was all. On one occasion, when Ed Mason and I met a number of the parochial school boys out in the country, there was an exchange of epithets that stopped (as such meetings did not always stop) this side of blows. I was reduced to a state of almost tearful indignation when one of the little Irish boys asserted that I was "a Protestant."

I denied the charge vehemently, but when I got home and repeated the insult,I learned that it was only too true. I had never suspected it, and had gone on thinking that I was merely a Unitarian. Alas, it seemed that I was a Protestant as well.

The charm and quaintness of the past had by no means vanished from the old town. Wooden ships were still built on the river, now and then, and the sea-captains gathered and gossiped in the rooms of the Marine Society. Overhead was a museum of curiosities of the deep, and of foreign lands. Some one of the captains would always be willing to unlock the room for us, and let us inspect the dusty albatross, the dried flying-fishes, the little ships in bottles, and all the other objects of interest.

One grocery, still displayed the sign "E. & W. I. Goods," and more than one citizen walked the streets in a beaver hat. There was old fat Captain Millett,who tacked down Main Street every morning in summer under an enormous green-lined umbrella, big enough to shelter a family. There was Captain Bannister, who lived alone in his curious little house on West Injy Lane, where he cultivated a garden patch of cinnamon pinks. And there was Mr. Babbitt, the Quaker gentleman, who used to pass with stately tread, as we played on Elm Street, or about the pond. He was tall and dignified, and he wore a high hat and a frock coat,—I had almost said a surtout,—with a shirt collar so high and antiquated that he seemed to belong to the time of Martin Van Buren. He kept on his black velvet ear-caps until summer was well advanced, and he put them on again the first of September. But he was the friend of a great poet, and every one respected him for that, as well as for his own character.

There was still a town crier,—one of the last, or, as he claimed, the very last one in this country. "Squawboo" (as we were told we must not call him), or Mr. Landford (as we were told we ought to call him), walked the streets with a large dinner bell. He would pause at intervals, and ring his bell vigorously. Then, throwing back his head, he would emit a volume of sound which would strike the hearer with astonishment. I have seen strangers paralyzed with amazement as they heard for the first time, and unexpectedly, the deep, tremendous tones that issued from his throat.

"Hear—what—I—have—to—say!" he would begin. "Grand—dance—at—City—Hall—to-morrow—evening—at—eight—o'clock.—Admission—fifty—cents—ladies free!—COME, ONE—COME,EVERYBODY!!"

And then he would ring the bell again, and walk on.

I have stopped, for the most of this chapter, to explain what kind of a town it was in which we passed the believing years, the years which began with us, and continued for a dozen summers or so. But now, if you please, we will return to that afternoon when we dashed out of school, and left Mr. Colburn and Miss Temple behind. We ran into a land of wonder. The first thing for me to learn about was that fishing trip for to-morrow.

I hastily consulted Ed Mason about it. No; we could not go, it must be postponed. Parts of the necessary tackle were missing, and there were reasons, connected with the approaching Fourth of July, why neither of us desired to make any avoidable expenditures just then.

But there was another plan, into which I might be admitted,—if I could prove trustworthy.

"You won't tell?" queried Ed Mason.

"Course not!"

"Cross your heart?"

I crossed my heart and hoped I might die.

But I could not know just then,—I must wait until next morning.

It was fearful discipline for the soul, but I survived until after breakfast the next day. Then I presented myself at the Masons' side yard,—their house was within stone's throw of ours.

Ed had, so I understood, some mysterious recipe,—some ceremony to perform that was not only extraordinary in itself, but it was to be rewarded in the most fascinating manner imaginable.

He came out of the house with a serious face, led me down behind an apple tree, and there, after looking carefully about for eavesdroppers, unfolded the cryptic plot.

CHAPTER IIIMAGICYou took rose-leaves—fresh rose-leaves—and mixed them with brown sugar. Then you wrapped them in a leaf from a grape-vine, and buried the whole business in the ground. You let them stay for three days. At the end of that time you dug them up and ate them; ate them with rapture known only to those who have eaten this particular delicacy. For to the natural fragrance of the rose-leaves and the nourishing and delicious properties of brown sugar, that interval of three days in the warm earth had added a new quality. A mysterious alchemy had been at work and transformed the mixture into something exquisite—adish to be envied by great kings and sultans. It had about it odors of the East; savors of Araby the blest.So said Ed Mason's older brother, Billy. And he was nearly thirteen. He did not use all the words which I have used to describe the taste of the rose-leaf compound. He had merely said it was "bully." That was enough for us—that, and the charm of the operation itself. He had tried it many times in the far-off days of his youth; and now we set out to make some for ourselves.The rose-leaves were easy to get. We had only to climb over the fence and we were in Auntie Merrill's garden. Auntie Merrill was old, and she seldom came into the garden. She had no one with whom to share it; and the roses budded, bloomed, and dropped their petals unheeded to the path. From this path we gathered some; but it is likely that otherswere induced, with little effort, to leave the full-blown flowers a day or two in advance of their natural fall.Roses are beautiful things, even to boys of eight or nine, but æsthetic considerations must give way before the stern, practical demands of life.We debated whether red or yellow roses were most likely to give good results. At last we decided to combine the two colors, and a tempting mixture they made. We put the leaves in my hat, and climbed the fence again into the Masons' back yard.The next ingredient was brown sugar. Here, again, the matter was simple. A barrel of the pleasing substance lived in a certain dim passage leading from Ed Mason's mother's pantry. It was dark, moist, and a joy forever. It had the crawly habit peculiar to brown sugar, and it came away (when questing hands wereplunged into the barrel) in lumps that filled the mouth and turned the cares of life to vanity and unimportance. With it, during hard days, we frequently restored our wasted tissues.The rose-leaves were left to themselves while we made a reconnaissance in force toward the place of the sugar barrel. The enemy (one Nora Sullivan, a desperate character) was reported as engaged in washing dishes in the kitchen. She neglected to station any outposts, so her carelessness was our advantage.We made the customary investigation for a large gray rat—supposed, since a time to which the mind of man runneth not back, to dwell behind the barrel. As usual, he was found missing.We seized the sugar and retired in discretion and stickiness to the yard. There we mixed the rose-leaves and the sugar. From the vine that grew on theside of the woodshed we picked a large leaf. This was the vine that furnished leaves to be worn inside our hats to prevent sunstroke on hot days.No one knows how many sunstrokes we escaped by means of those grape leaves.We wrapped the red and yellow petals, well covered with sugar, in the grape leaf, and secured it with straws and blades of grass. No creeping worm nor brisk beetle was to partake of this food of the gods.Next came the rite of burial. There was no doubt that the leaf and its contents must be buried in Auntie Merrill's garden. That was the scene of all mysteries, and the only place where our caché would be reasonably secure from Ed Mason's sister Louise and her friend Jessie Plummer. These were high matters, too great for the feminine intellect. Also, of course,we had Auntie Merrill to consider. A place must be discovered where she would not come poking around."Back of the lilies-of-the-valley," said Ed Mason."It's kind of wet there," I objected."What dif'rence does that make?""Well, it might not work there. I tell you: let's put 'em in the corner, near Hawkins' shed.""No; I want 'em back of the lilies-of-the-valley. It's my mother's brown sugar, and Billy told me how to do it. You wouldn't know anything 'bout it if I hadn't told you!"I succumbed to the force of this argument, and we began to excavate back of the lily bed. With shingles (procured from men who were shingling Dr. Macey's barn) we dug the pit and covered the grape leaf with earth. Then, after driving away a prowling cat (who probablyrecollected funeral services performed over deceased robins in that very garden), we climbed the fence once more and set out to endure the weary interval of three days.It was Saturday morning, and ten o'clock. Not until Tuesday at the same hour could we unearth the treasure.Billy had said so.Three days were required, no more and no less. At the end of that time, to the minute, the magic forces that dwelt in the earth would have effected the change, and what we buried as simple brown sugar and the petals of roses would come forth in a new form—a form to make epicures sigh with content.We walked up the yard, by the woodshed, past the apple tree and the clothes-jack, and out to the street. But something had happened. A thick black cloud had descended and covered us. A fewminutes before, the sun was shining gloriously, and we stood on the mountain peak of action and expectancy. Now it had all come to an end; the rose-leaves were buried, and before us in all their hideous length and tediousness stretched those three days.Three days!Three years rather! The face of the heavens was darkened and we wandered in gloom. We made an effort of cheerfulness and started for the pond with a view to catching Lucky-bugs. But we abandoned this almost immediately, and decided to hunt up Jimmy Toppan, who lived next door. Then we remembered that Jimmy had gone to his grandmother's farm in the country for the whole day. By this time the pall that overhung us had become deeper and more insufferable.We turned the corner of the street and gazed drearily at Dr. Macey's barn andthe men at work on its roof. The old shingles were coming down with a clatter, and the odor of the new ones filled the air.Perhaps there was hope in shingles!We remembered that it takes but few strokes of a jack-knife, a little cutting and boring, to convert a shingle into a boat. It only needs pointing at the bows and rounding at the stern, the insertion of a mast and the fitting of a paper sail—half an old envelope will do. The boats thus fashioned would sail half across the pond—until stuck in the lily-pads.We chose two shingles and began to whittle. But there was no salt in it. Our minds wandered, and after a few moments Ed dropped his shingle, closed his knife, and put it in his pocket."I'm goin' into the barn an' look for mice," he announced.About the chutes which let grain intothe stalls, mice were known to linger. Once I had caught one in my hands, a feat which I instantly regretted, for the mouse bit my finger and made his escape in short order. Since that time the pursuit of the common drab mouse had been considered a pastime not without the charm of danger and the risk of bloodshed. But now the mention of mice only brought my thoughts back—as if they needed bringing!—to the subject that possessed us both."Do you think you drove that old cat away?" I asked abruptly.Ed understood immediately; I did not need to specify the cat."I dunno," he said; "she may be foolin' round now. P'r'aps we ought to go and see.""Let's," I replied quickly.We crossed the street, cut across the Toppans' back yard, and then, by a certainfence route, well understood and prescribed for all important occasions, entered Auntie Merrill's garden.A cat slunk off between the box hedges, and a robin flew hurriedly from the fence to the apple tree where he had his nest of mud and dried grass. He uttered three or four excited notes as he flew.The sunlight of a morning in late June fell in patches on the paths, the hedges, and the flower beds. The rose-bushes dropped their petals, and the syringa moved in the breeze.That was a garden!It had old-fashioned flowers—snapdragons, portulacas (now in full blaze in the sun), and hollyhocks—in the days before old-fashioned flowers became new-fashioned again. Orioles hunted their food in the fruit trees to carry it back to their hanging nests in the elms that shaded the street near by. It was firefly-hauntedat night, and we used to run up and down the paths and try to catch the fireflies in our hats. It was full of long, mysterious vistas, overgrown shrubs breaking in on the paths, and valuable hiding-places. Plums grew there, and pears and cherries and peaches.When, on rare occasions, Auntie Merrill walked slowly down the path, she appeared to be totally unaware that Indians, highway robbers, pirates, cowboys, spies, scouts, and other ruffians were dogging her footsteps from bush to bush. We always thought it best to keep an eye on her.It is a perfectly safe place to-day. Auntie Merrill is dead; the shrubs are trimmed, the hedges cut down, the paths covered with asphalt, and the whole garden a dismal spectacle of precision, order, and expensive simplicity.But on the morning when we returnedto look after our buried rose-leaves, no one had dreamed of these wretched improvements. Keeping well down below the hedge, we reached the lilies-of-the-valley without encountering any opposition. The place of burial was inspected and the earth searched for tracks.None appeared.Then we stood over the spot and meditated. A lilac bush sheltered us from inquisitive persons in the house.Finally Ed Mason spoke."I wonder how they're gettin' on," he said."I wonder!" said I.Then there was another pause. I poked my foot among the lilies where we had concealed the shingles we had used as trowels. They were waiting for Tuesday morning.Ed spoke again."Let's dig 'em up and look at 'em!"Already I was fishing for the shingles. In half a minute we had brought the grape leaf once more to the light of day. We unfastened it and gazed upon its contents.It was a quarter past ten. Fifteen minutes had passed since we buried the mixture."Don't you suppose they're done?" I queried.Ed's only reply was to take a pinch between his fingers and convey it to his mouth.I did the same.Then we ate the whole lot. It tasted—and on this point I will pledge my word—it tasted exactly like rose-leaves and brown sugar!

MAGIC

You took rose-leaves—fresh rose-leaves—and mixed them with brown sugar. Then you wrapped them in a leaf from a grape-vine, and buried the whole business in the ground. You let them stay for three days. At the end of that time you dug them up and ate them; ate them with rapture known only to those who have eaten this particular delicacy. For to the natural fragrance of the rose-leaves and the nourishing and delicious properties of brown sugar, that interval of three days in the warm earth had added a new quality. A mysterious alchemy had been at work and transformed the mixture into something exquisite—adish to be envied by great kings and sultans. It had about it odors of the East; savors of Araby the blest.

So said Ed Mason's older brother, Billy. And he was nearly thirteen. He did not use all the words which I have used to describe the taste of the rose-leaf compound. He had merely said it was "bully." That was enough for us—that, and the charm of the operation itself. He had tried it many times in the far-off days of his youth; and now we set out to make some for ourselves.

The rose-leaves were easy to get. We had only to climb over the fence and we were in Auntie Merrill's garden. Auntie Merrill was old, and she seldom came into the garden. She had no one with whom to share it; and the roses budded, bloomed, and dropped their petals unheeded to the path. From this path we gathered some; but it is likely that otherswere induced, with little effort, to leave the full-blown flowers a day or two in advance of their natural fall.

Roses are beautiful things, even to boys of eight or nine, but æsthetic considerations must give way before the stern, practical demands of life.

We debated whether red or yellow roses were most likely to give good results. At last we decided to combine the two colors, and a tempting mixture they made. We put the leaves in my hat, and climbed the fence again into the Masons' back yard.

The next ingredient was brown sugar. Here, again, the matter was simple. A barrel of the pleasing substance lived in a certain dim passage leading from Ed Mason's mother's pantry. It was dark, moist, and a joy forever. It had the crawly habit peculiar to brown sugar, and it came away (when questing hands wereplunged into the barrel) in lumps that filled the mouth and turned the cares of life to vanity and unimportance. With it, during hard days, we frequently restored our wasted tissues.

The rose-leaves were left to themselves while we made a reconnaissance in force toward the place of the sugar barrel. The enemy (one Nora Sullivan, a desperate character) was reported as engaged in washing dishes in the kitchen. She neglected to station any outposts, so her carelessness was our advantage.

We made the customary investigation for a large gray rat—supposed, since a time to which the mind of man runneth not back, to dwell behind the barrel. As usual, he was found missing.

We seized the sugar and retired in discretion and stickiness to the yard. There we mixed the rose-leaves and the sugar. From the vine that grew on theside of the woodshed we picked a large leaf. This was the vine that furnished leaves to be worn inside our hats to prevent sunstroke on hot days.

No one knows how many sunstrokes we escaped by means of those grape leaves.

We wrapped the red and yellow petals, well covered with sugar, in the grape leaf, and secured it with straws and blades of grass. No creeping worm nor brisk beetle was to partake of this food of the gods.

Next came the rite of burial. There was no doubt that the leaf and its contents must be buried in Auntie Merrill's garden. That was the scene of all mysteries, and the only place where our caché would be reasonably secure from Ed Mason's sister Louise and her friend Jessie Plummer. These were high matters, too great for the feminine intellect. Also, of course,we had Auntie Merrill to consider. A place must be discovered where she would not come poking around.

"Back of the lilies-of-the-valley," said Ed Mason.

"It's kind of wet there," I objected.

"What dif'rence does that make?"

"Well, it might not work there. I tell you: let's put 'em in the corner, near Hawkins' shed."

"No; I want 'em back of the lilies-of-the-valley. It's my mother's brown sugar, and Billy told me how to do it. You wouldn't know anything 'bout it if I hadn't told you!"

I succumbed to the force of this argument, and we began to excavate back of the lily bed. With shingles (procured from men who were shingling Dr. Macey's barn) we dug the pit and covered the grape leaf with earth. Then, after driving away a prowling cat (who probablyrecollected funeral services performed over deceased robins in that very garden), we climbed the fence once more and set out to endure the weary interval of three days.

It was Saturday morning, and ten o'clock. Not until Tuesday at the same hour could we unearth the treasure.

Billy had said so.

Three days were required, no more and no less. At the end of that time, to the minute, the magic forces that dwelt in the earth would have effected the change, and what we buried as simple brown sugar and the petals of roses would come forth in a new form—a form to make epicures sigh with content.

We walked up the yard, by the woodshed, past the apple tree and the clothes-jack, and out to the street. But something had happened. A thick black cloud had descended and covered us. A fewminutes before, the sun was shining gloriously, and we stood on the mountain peak of action and expectancy. Now it had all come to an end; the rose-leaves were buried, and before us in all their hideous length and tediousness stretched those three days.

Three days!

Three years rather! The face of the heavens was darkened and we wandered in gloom. We made an effort of cheerfulness and started for the pond with a view to catching Lucky-bugs. But we abandoned this almost immediately, and decided to hunt up Jimmy Toppan, who lived next door. Then we remembered that Jimmy had gone to his grandmother's farm in the country for the whole day. By this time the pall that overhung us had become deeper and more insufferable.

We turned the corner of the street and gazed drearily at Dr. Macey's barn andthe men at work on its roof. The old shingles were coming down with a clatter, and the odor of the new ones filled the air.

Perhaps there was hope in shingles!

We remembered that it takes but few strokes of a jack-knife, a little cutting and boring, to convert a shingle into a boat. It only needs pointing at the bows and rounding at the stern, the insertion of a mast and the fitting of a paper sail—half an old envelope will do. The boats thus fashioned would sail half across the pond—until stuck in the lily-pads.

We chose two shingles and began to whittle. But there was no salt in it. Our minds wandered, and after a few moments Ed dropped his shingle, closed his knife, and put it in his pocket.

"I'm goin' into the barn an' look for mice," he announced.

About the chutes which let grain intothe stalls, mice were known to linger. Once I had caught one in my hands, a feat which I instantly regretted, for the mouse bit my finger and made his escape in short order. Since that time the pursuit of the common drab mouse had been considered a pastime not without the charm of danger and the risk of bloodshed. But now the mention of mice only brought my thoughts back—as if they needed bringing!—to the subject that possessed us both.

"Do you think you drove that old cat away?" I asked abruptly.

Ed understood immediately; I did not need to specify the cat.

"I dunno," he said; "she may be foolin' round now. P'r'aps we ought to go and see."

"Let's," I replied quickly.

We crossed the street, cut across the Toppans' back yard, and then, by a certainfence route, well understood and prescribed for all important occasions, entered Auntie Merrill's garden.

A cat slunk off between the box hedges, and a robin flew hurriedly from the fence to the apple tree where he had his nest of mud and dried grass. He uttered three or four excited notes as he flew.

The sunlight of a morning in late June fell in patches on the paths, the hedges, and the flower beds. The rose-bushes dropped their petals, and the syringa moved in the breeze.

That was a garden!

It had old-fashioned flowers—snapdragons, portulacas (now in full blaze in the sun), and hollyhocks—in the days before old-fashioned flowers became new-fashioned again. Orioles hunted their food in the fruit trees to carry it back to their hanging nests in the elms that shaded the street near by. It was firefly-hauntedat night, and we used to run up and down the paths and try to catch the fireflies in our hats. It was full of long, mysterious vistas, overgrown shrubs breaking in on the paths, and valuable hiding-places. Plums grew there, and pears and cherries and peaches.

When, on rare occasions, Auntie Merrill walked slowly down the path, she appeared to be totally unaware that Indians, highway robbers, pirates, cowboys, spies, scouts, and other ruffians were dogging her footsteps from bush to bush. We always thought it best to keep an eye on her.

It is a perfectly safe place to-day. Auntie Merrill is dead; the shrubs are trimmed, the hedges cut down, the paths covered with asphalt, and the whole garden a dismal spectacle of precision, order, and expensive simplicity.

But on the morning when we returnedto look after our buried rose-leaves, no one had dreamed of these wretched improvements. Keeping well down below the hedge, we reached the lilies-of-the-valley without encountering any opposition. The place of burial was inspected and the earth searched for tracks.

None appeared.

Then we stood over the spot and meditated. A lilac bush sheltered us from inquisitive persons in the house.

Finally Ed Mason spoke.

"I wonder how they're gettin' on," he said.

"I wonder!" said I.

Then there was another pause. I poked my foot among the lilies where we had concealed the shingles we had used as trowels. They were waiting for Tuesday morning.

Ed spoke again.

"Let's dig 'em up and look at 'em!"

Already I was fishing for the shingles. In half a minute we had brought the grape leaf once more to the light of day. We unfastened it and gazed upon its contents.

It was a quarter past ten. Fifteen minutes had passed since we buried the mixture.

"Don't you suppose they're done?" I queried.

Ed's only reply was to take a pinch between his fingers and convey it to his mouth.

I did the same.

Then we ate the whole lot. It tasted—and on this point I will pledge my word—it tasted exactly like rose-leaves and brown sugar!

CHAPTER IVNAPOLEON JONESOn an afternoon early in the following week, Jimmy Toppan, Ed Mason, and I were seriously engaged at the frog pond. We had discovered, in the morning, an outlet, through which all the water was in danger of escaping. The town authorities seemed to have overlooked this channel, but we could not let their neglect cause public suffering.To have the pond run dry was too serious to contemplate!"The water wouldn'tallgo out," asserted Ed Mason, "'cos there's a place, back of the Court House, where there ain't any bottom.""That ain't inthispond," Jimmy corrected, "it's over in Davenport's."But Ed stuck to his opinion."Itishere. An' there was a volcano here once, an' when the volcano dried up, the pond came."We looked with considerable interest toward the site of the extinct crater. But all was placid blue water now, and whatever might be concealed beneath the surface remained a secret.Our duty was not the less clear, and we set out to build a dam that should keep in the water, volcano or no volcano, bottomless pit or not.On the terrace above us sat an old man, who watched our proceedings, chewed tobacco vigorously, and whittled small sticks. We had seen him, sitting on the same bench, in the morning. Indeed, he had been there for days, perhaps weeks, past, until he had become a fixture in the landscape.Ed Mason climbed the terrace to get another armful of stones for the dam. As he was returning, the old man called Ed to him, and offered, as a gift, a little musket whittled out of soft pine. The stones were laid down promptly, the gift accepted, and the two engaged in conversation. Jimmy and I could not hear what was being said, but we observed the incident of the little musket, and our interest in the dam waned. We went up the terrace to see if there were any more muskets to be distributed.But when we arrived, the old fellow pointed at Ed with his jack-knife, and addressed us."He wants to know if I ever was in a battle!"Evidently the question had been an absurd one. We gathered this from the tone of derision with which it was repeated, and we promptly showed our appreciationof its absurdity by grinning. We marvelled at Ed's obtuseness. Not to recognize this round-faced old man in the dark-blue suit as the very incarnation of war could only be downright stupidity."Was I ever in a battle?" he inquired with deliberate sarcasm. "Well, I don't know whatyoucall a battle, but what do you think of a hundred an' thirty guns on one hill an' eighty guns on another hill, all blazing away at each other like Sancho?"We thought well of it. It seemed to us a very respectable battle. But Ed Mason was destined to put his foot in it again. He held up the little pine musket."Guns like this?" he queried.The old fellow looked at Ed for a moment. Then he turned his gaze toward Jimmy and me and shook his head sorrowfully."No, not guns like that. Them's whatthe infantry has. A hundred an' thirty of them against eighty wouldn't be no battle. 'Twould be a squeamish. An' a darned small one at that. I meanguns. Don't you know what guns be?"Jimmy Toppan spoke."Oh, I know! Cannons. Like the one they fired last Fourth of July, down at the foot of River Street.""Yes, that's the kind, I guess. I wa'n't there. Dave Hunt was doin' that. I see in the paper they called him 'Gunner David Hunt.' I nearly bust over that. 'Gunner David Hunt'!"He rocked forward and back on the bench, chuckling and repeating, "GunnerDavid Hunt!" from time to time."Why, where do you think he was durin' the whole war?"We could not imagine."Down in Boston Harbor—that'swhere he was. Why, he never smelled powder in his life!"This seemed extraordinary to me. I had seen "Gunner David Hunt" on that Fourth of July, and if he hadn't smelled powder that day, he must have been suffering with a fearful cold. I had smelled it distinctly; even kept, as I was, at a discreet distance. For Mr. Hunt, working with the greatest activity in the midst of clouds of smoke, not to have detected the odor struck me as amazing. I was incautious enough to point out my impressions to the old fellow in blue.He rewarded me with another such look of scorn as that with which he greeted Ed's mistake about the guns."He never smelled powder, I tell yer. That means he never heard a shot fired in anger. He may have fired some of them guns down in that fort in Boston Harbor, at a hogshead floatin' in the water,jus' for practice. But he never stood up against the enemy an' give 'em back shot for shot. An' the paper called him 'GunnerHunt'! Oh, my Chris'mas!"He rocked forward and back again, and laughed long and heartily. As it seemed to be the proper thing to do, all three of us laughed, as well as we could, over the presumption of Mr. Hunt.Then the soldier became serious. He took his walking-stick, held it out at arm's length, and pointed across the pond."Do you see that Court House over there?"As it was the most prominent object in the landscape, and hardly one hundred yards distant, we instantly admitted that we did see it."An' do you see George Washin'ton over to the right?"Yes; George Washington was plainlyvisible. There he stood, on his pedestal, with his arm stretched out at his side, as if to smack any small boy who walked on the grass."Well, over beyond George Washin'ton was where the enemy's batteries lay—they stretched from there up to Joe Peabody's house.""When was this?"We all spoke at once, and in great excitement.Enemy's batterieson Elm Street!The old man looked at us solemnly, and chewed with great deliberation."That's to give you an idea how they lay on the field. This is on a small scale, you see. Our guns were right along this bank, from here to the fourth tree. No, the fifth. And that graveyard back there," he turned around and pointed, "was 'bout in the same position, only it run down nearer where we are now. Down therewhere the pond is, was near a mile of open—wheat-fields and so on. Everything was mighty quiet 'bout the middle of the morning, 'cos we'd been fightin' for two days, you see. We could see the rebels plain enough, an' knew they was up to some deviltry. But we knew the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte had his eye on 'em all right."Napoleon Bonaparte! Our eyes opened at this. "Was Napoleon Bonaparte in this battle?" I asked."Washe?" returned the soldier, with great energy. "I guess he come pretty near bein'. He was in command of the whole army. Who did yer think was, excep' him?"I had not given the matter much thought. But I replied weakly that I supposed Napoleon had lived in France."You did? Well, you got that out of a book, I s'pose?"I admitted, with some embarrassment, that I did get it from a book."I thought so. Well, if you're so smart with your books, why don't you tell this instead of me? P'r'aps you was in this battle, hey?"My face became uncomfortably warm. I could not think of anything to say. After waiting a little, the soldier continued."If this young feller, that knows so all-fired much, ain't goin' to tell us how this battle was fought, I might as well go on. As I says before, we could see their guns, an' we could see the rebels movin' about 'round 'em. Some of their guns was in a little patch of woods, over where that team is standin' now. It kep' on quiet for more'n two hours—no one firin' a shot. Then we see the rebels was gettin' ready. They moved some of their batteries. An' then the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparterode up to me on his white hoss, an' he says, 'Bring out yer guns!' An' so I brought 'em out!"My doubts vanished. That white horse was conclusive.Ed Mason spoke in an awed voice:—"What did you say?""What did I say? I says, 'All right, yer Majesty.' An' I fetched the guns round to the northwestward.""What did Napoleon do then?" asked Ed."What did he do? He just sat there on his white hoss an' he watched to see if we did it all right. An' we lined 'em up smart, an' unlimbered, an' back went the hosses, an' there we was, all ready in no time. The Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte he says, 'First-rate, boys; you did that slick as grease!'""An' then the rebels let off two guns for a signal, an' then their whole hundredan' thirty began to once, an' so did our eighty. An' that kep' up for an hour.""Did any of their shots hit you?" inquired Jimmy."Not to speak of. They fired too high. Their shells went plumb over our heads, an' over the infantry, who was lyin' on the ground behind us, an' bust in the cemetary. Some of the gravestones was broke. Some of our men was killed when the caissons blew up."We had no idea what caissons were; but they blew up—that was enough for us."Then the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte ordered us to cease firin', one battery at a time. That was where he was foxy. He wanted to make the rebels think our guns had been dismounted, or that we was out of ammunition, so's they would charge. And he fooled 'em, sure enough, for pretty soon they did charge!"He paused, and bit off some more tobacco, while we jumped up and down with excitement. Then he pointed again with his cane."Do you see them three trees to the left of the white house? Well, bearin' a little to the right of them is a clump of bushes. There was some woods at that p'int of the enemy's position, an' they come outer them. We could see 'em plain as day, a long line of infantry, an' the officers on hosses. Some of 'em was in gray uniforms, but not all. We could see their flags, an' the sun shinin' on the bayonets. First one long line come, an' then another, an' then another. There was close to fifteen thousand of 'em—more than all the folks in this town!"We followed his gaze across the pond, across the mall, to that clump of bushes. At any moment we expected to see thegray-clad lines break out from behind them and start toward us with loud yells. But we had forgotten how securely we were planted behind the old man's batteries."It didn't take us a minute to open on 'em. We had our guns trained in no time, an' we made it mighty hot for 'em as they come across that valley. One bunch come right for my guns, but we had loaded with grape an' we just blew 'em to smithereens. They turned round, what was left of 'em, an' run back like Jesse. There was a rebel general on a brown hoss, an' his hoss went down, an' we nearly gothim."He stopped. After waiting a moment, we all burst out:—"What happened then?""Why, nothin'. The battle was over. The rebels had skedaddled. But the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, he calledme 'round to his tent that night, an' he give me this cane.""What,thatone?""This one. He says, says he: 'I like the way you worked your guns to-day, an' I want you to keep this stick to remember me by. I cut it myself.'"He let each boy of us take the stick in his hand and examine it reverently. It was a cane of some brown wood, with a round knob at the top, made of ivory or bone.Then he took a fat silver watch out of his pocket, and looked at that."It's pretty nigh supper-time, an' I'm goin' along."He rose from the bench and walked slowly away, limping slightly, and leaning on the cane—the cane that Napoleon had given him!We walked toward our homes, maintaining a profound silence. On the otherside of the pond we met Rob Currier, who was catching hornpouts. He addressed us derisively."Was that old Napoleon Jones you were talking with? He been giving you some of his yarns? My father says he's cracked. He was in the Civil War, but some one got him all worked up about Napoleon, till he thinks he has seen him."If Rob had hit each one of us in the face with a wet hornpout, the effect would have been more agreeable. We encountered a realist for the first time when we met Rob that afternoon. We were walking through a golden haze of romance, when he suddenly drew this leaden-gray cloud across the sky."You make me sick!" declared Ed Mason; "didn't he show us the very cane that Napoleon gave him?""Of course he did!" replied Jimmy Toppan.And "Of course he did!" I chimed in.So we fell on Rob Currier, dragged him down on the turf, and stuffed grass and clover down the back of his neck until he yelled:—"I take it all back!"Then we let him up.

NAPOLEON JONES

On an afternoon early in the following week, Jimmy Toppan, Ed Mason, and I were seriously engaged at the frog pond. We had discovered, in the morning, an outlet, through which all the water was in danger of escaping. The town authorities seemed to have overlooked this channel, but we could not let their neglect cause public suffering.

To have the pond run dry was too serious to contemplate!

"The water wouldn'tallgo out," asserted Ed Mason, "'cos there's a place, back of the Court House, where there ain't any bottom."

"That ain't inthispond," Jimmy corrected, "it's over in Davenport's."

But Ed stuck to his opinion.

"Itishere. An' there was a volcano here once, an' when the volcano dried up, the pond came."

We looked with considerable interest toward the site of the extinct crater. But all was placid blue water now, and whatever might be concealed beneath the surface remained a secret.

Our duty was not the less clear, and we set out to build a dam that should keep in the water, volcano or no volcano, bottomless pit or not.

On the terrace above us sat an old man, who watched our proceedings, chewed tobacco vigorously, and whittled small sticks. We had seen him, sitting on the same bench, in the morning. Indeed, he had been there for days, perhaps weeks, past, until he had become a fixture in the landscape.

Ed Mason climbed the terrace to get another armful of stones for the dam. As he was returning, the old man called Ed to him, and offered, as a gift, a little musket whittled out of soft pine. The stones were laid down promptly, the gift accepted, and the two engaged in conversation. Jimmy and I could not hear what was being said, but we observed the incident of the little musket, and our interest in the dam waned. We went up the terrace to see if there were any more muskets to be distributed.

But when we arrived, the old fellow pointed at Ed with his jack-knife, and addressed us.

"He wants to know if I ever was in a battle!"

Evidently the question had been an absurd one. We gathered this from the tone of derision with which it was repeated, and we promptly showed our appreciationof its absurdity by grinning. We marvelled at Ed's obtuseness. Not to recognize this round-faced old man in the dark-blue suit as the very incarnation of war could only be downright stupidity.

"Was I ever in a battle?" he inquired with deliberate sarcasm. "Well, I don't know whatyoucall a battle, but what do you think of a hundred an' thirty guns on one hill an' eighty guns on another hill, all blazing away at each other like Sancho?"

We thought well of it. It seemed to us a very respectable battle. But Ed Mason was destined to put his foot in it again. He held up the little pine musket.

"Guns like this?" he queried.

The old fellow looked at Ed for a moment. Then he turned his gaze toward Jimmy and me and shook his head sorrowfully.

"No, not guns like that. Them's whatthe infantry has. A hundred an' thirty of them against eighty wouldn't be no battle. 'Twould be a squeamish. An' a darned small one at that. I meanguns. Don't you know what guns be?"

Jimmy Toppan spoke.

"Oh, I know! Cannons. Like the one they fired last Fourth of July, down at the foot of River Street."

"Yes, that's the kind, I guess. I wa'n't there. Dave Hunt was doin' that. I see in the paper they called him 'Gunner David Hunt.' I nearly bust over that. 'Gunner David Hunt'!"

He rocked forward and back on the bench, chuckling and repeating, "GunnerDavid Hunt!" from time to time.

"Why, where do you think he was durin' the whole war?"

We could not imagine.

"Down in Boston Harbor—that'swhere he was. Why, he never smelled powder in his life!"

This seemed extraordinary to me. I had seen "Gunner David Hunt" on that Fourth of July, and if he hadn't smelled powder that day, he must have been suffering with a fearful cold. I had smelled it distinctly; even kept, as I was, at a discreet distance. For Mr. Hunt, working with the greatest activity in the midst of clouds of smoke, not to have detected the odor struck me as amazing. I was incautious enough to point out my impressions to the old fellow in blue.

He rewarded me with another such look of scorn as that with which he greeted Ed's mistake about the guns.

"He never smelled powder, I tell yer. That means he never heard a shot fired in anger. He may have fired some of them guns down in that fort in Boston Harbor, at a hogshead floatin' in the water,jus' for practice. But he never stood up against the enemy an' give 'em back shot for shot. An' the paper called him 'GunnerHunt'! Oh, my Chris'mas!"

He rocked forward and back again, and laughed long and heartily. As it seemed to be the proper thing to do, all three of us laughed, as well as we could, over the presumption of Mr. Hunt.

Then the soldier became serious. He took his walking-stick, held it out at arm's length, and pointed across the pond.

"Do you see that Court House over there?"

As it was the most prominent object in the landscape, and hardly one hundred yards distant, we instantly admitted that we did see it.

"An' do you see George Washin'ton over to the right?"

Yes; George Washington was plainlyvisible. There he stood, on his pedestal, with his arm stretched out at his side, as if to smack any small boy who walked on the grass.

"Well, over beyond George Washin'ton was where the enemy's batteries lay—they stretched from there up to Joe Peabody's house."

"When was this?"

We all spoke at once, and in great excitement.Enemy's batterieson Elm Street!

The old man looked at us solemnly, and chewed with great deliberation.

"That's to give you an idea how they lay on the field. This is on a small scale, you see. Our guns were right along this bank, from here to the fourth tree. No, the fifth. And that graveyard back there," he turned around and pointed, "was 'bout in the same position, only it run down nearer where we are now. Down therewhere the pond is, was near a mile of open—wheat-fields and so on. Everything was mighty quiet 'bout the middle of the morning, 'cos we'd been fightin' for two days, you see. We could see the rebels plain enough, an' knew they was up to some deviltry. But we knew the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte had his eye on 'em all right."

Napoleon Bonaparte! Our eyes opened at this. "Was Napoleon Bonaparte in this battle?" I asked.

"Washe?" returned the soldier, with great energy. "I guess he come pretty near bein'. He was in command of the whole army. Who did yer think was, excep' him?"

I had not given the matter much thought. But I replied weakly that I supposed Napoleon had lived in France.

"You did? Well, you got that out of a book, I s'pose?"

I admitted, with some embarrassment, that I did get it from a book.

"I thought so. Well, if you're so smart with your books, why don't you tell this instead of me? P'r'aps you was in this battle, hey?"

My face became uncomfortably warm. I could not think of anything to say. After waiting a little, the soldier continued.

"If this young feller, that knows so all-fired much, ain't goin' to tell us how this battle was fought, I might as well go on. As I says before, we could see their guns, an' we could see the rebels movin' about 'round 'em. Some of their guns was in a little patch of woods, over where that team is standin' now. It kep' on quiet for more'n two hours—no one firin' a shot. Then we see the rebels was gettin' ready. They moved some of their batteries. An' then the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparterode up to me on his white hoss, an' he says, 'Bring out yer guns!' An' so I brought 'em out!"

My doubts vanished. That white horse was conclusive.

Ed Mason spoke in an awed voice:—

"What did you say?"

"What did I say? I says, 'All right, yer Majesty.' An' I fetched the guns round to the northwestward."

"What did Napoleon do then?" asked Ed.

"What did he do? He just sat there on his white hoss an' he watched to see if we did it all right. An' we lined 'em up smart, an' unlimbered, an' back went the hosses, an' there we was, all ready in no time. The Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte he says, 'First-rate, boys; you did that slick as grease!'"

"An' then the rebels let off two guns for a signal, an' then their whole hundredan' thirty began to once, an' so did our eighty. An' that kep' up for an hour."

"Did any of their shots hit you?" inquired Jimmy.

"Not to speak of. They fired too high. Their shells went plumb over our heads, an' over the infantry, who was lyin' on the ground behind us, an' bust in the cemetary. Some of the gravestones was broke. Some of our men was killed when the caissons blew up."

We had no idea what caissons were; but they blew up—that was enough for us.

"Then the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte ordered us to cease firin', one battery at a time. That was where he was foxy. He wanted to make the rebels think our guns had been dismounted, or that we was out of ammunition, so's they would charge. And he fooled 'em, sure enough, for pretty soon they did charge!"

He paused, and bit off some more tobacco, while we jumped up and down with excitement. Then he pointed again with his cane.

"Do you see them three trees to the left of the white house? Well, bearin' a little to the right of them is a clump of bushes. There was some woods at that p'int of the enemy's position, an' they come outer them. We could see 'em plain as day, a long line of infantry, an' the officers on hosses. Some of 'em was in gray uniforms, but not all. We could see their flags, an' the sun shinin' on the bayonets. First one long line come, an' then another, an' then another. There was close to fifteen thousand of 'em—more than all the folks in this town!"

We followed his gaze across the pond, across the mall, to that clump of bushes. At any moment we expected to see thegray-clad lines break out from behind them and start toward us with loud yells. But we had forgotten how securely we were planted behind the old man's batteries.

"It didn't take us a minute to open on 'em. We had our guns trained in no time, an' we made it mighty hot for 'em as they come across that valley. One bunch come right for my guns, but we had loaded with grape an' we just blew 'em to smithereens. They turned round, what was left of 'em, an' run back like Jesse. There was a rebel general on a brown hoss, an' his hoss went down, an' we nearly gothim."

He stopped. After waiting a moment, we all burst out:—

"What happened then?"

"Why, nothin'. The battle was over. The rebels had skedaddled. But the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, he calledme 'round to his tent that night, an' he give me this cane."

"What,thatone?"

"This one. He says, says he: 'I like the way you worked your guns to-day, an' I want you to keep this stick to remember me by. I cut it myself.'"

He let each boy of us take the stick in his hand and examine it reverently. It was a cane of some brown wood, with a round knob at the top, made of ivory or bone.

Then he took a fat silver watch out of his pocket, and looked at that.

"It's pretty nigh supper-time, an' I'm goin' along."

He rose from the bench and walked slowly away, limping slightly, and leaning on the cane—the cane that Napoleon had given him!

We walked toward our homes, maintaining a profound silence. On the otherside of the pond we met Rob Currier, who was catching hornpouts. He addressed us derisively.

"Was that old Napoleon Jones you were talking with? He been giving you some of his yarns? My father says he's cracked. He was in the Civil War, but some one got him all worked up about Napoleon, till he thinks he has seen him."

If Rob had hit each one of us in the face with a wet hornpout, the effect would have been more agreeable. We encountered a realist for the first time when we met Rob that afternoon. We were walking through a golden haze of romance, when he suddenly drew this leaden-gray cloud across the sky.

"You make me sick!" declared Ed Mason; "didn't he show us the very cane that Napoleon gave him?"

"Of course he did!" replied Jimmy Toppan.

And "Of course he did!" I chimed in.

So we fell on Rob Currier, dragged him down on the turf, and stuffed grass and clover down the back of his neck until he yelled:—

"I take it all back!"

Then we let him up.

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