Bob was a great patriot, and on Saturdays practised shooting in the
attic with a bow and arrow, to perfect himself against the time of his
attaining to man's estate, when he fully intended to collect an army and
make an invasion on England. As an earnest of his hostile intentions, he
had already broken all the windows on that floor, and nearly
extinguished the eye of Betty, the chambermaid. To both of these
questions my grandmother replied in the negative, for she happened to
come into the world just after the Revolution; but in answer to Bob's
look of disappointment, she promised to tell him something about it in
the course of her narrative.

"My two most prominent faults," said she, "were vanity and curiosity,
and these both led me into a great many scrapes, which I shall endeavor
to relate for your edification. I shall represent them just as they
really were, and if I do not make especial comments on each separate
piece of misconduct, it is because I leave you to judge for yourselves,
by placing them in their true light. I shall not tell you the year I was
born in," she continued, "for then there would be a counting on certain
little fingers to see how old grandmamma is now. When I was a child--a
_very_ young one--I used to say that I remembered very well the day on
which I was born, for mother was down stairs frying dough-nuts. This
nondescript kind of cake was then much more fashionable for the
tea-table than it is at the present day. My mother was quite famous for
her skill in manufacturing them, and my great delight was to superintend
her operations, and be rewarded for good behavior with a limited
quantity of dough, which I manufactured into certain uncouth images,
called 'dough-nut babies.' Sometimes these beloved creations of genius
performed rather curious gymnastics on being placed in the boiling
grease--such as twisting on one side, throwing a limb entirely over
their heads, &c.; while not unfrequently a leg or an arm was found