numberless legs in the air--I mean the crabs, not the crabbers. We used
to go crabbing ourselves when we felt like it, with a net made of a bit
of mosquito-bar stretched over an iron hoop, and with a piece of meat
tied securely in the middle of it. When we hauled up those home-made
hoop-nets--most everything seems to have been home-made in those
days--we used to find one, two, perhaps three huge crabs revolving
clumsily about the centre of attraction in the hollow of the net; and
then we shouted in glee and went almost wild with excitement.

Just at the beginning of Meigg's Wharf there was a house of
entertainment that no doubt had a history and a mystery even in those
young days. We never quite comprehended it: we were too young for that,
and too shy and too well-bred to make curious or impertinent inquiry. We
sometimes stood at the wide doorway--it was forever invitingly open,
--and looked with awe and amazement at paintings richly framed and hung
so close together that no bit of the wall was visible. There was a bar
at the farther end of the long room,--there was always a bar somewhere
in those days; and there were cages filled with strange birds and
beasts,--as any one might know with his eyes shut, for the odor of it
all was repelling.

The strangest feature of that most strange hostelry was the amazing
wealth of cobwebs that mantled it. Cobwebs as dense as crape waved in
dusty rags from the ceiling; they veiled the pictures and festooned the
picture-frames, that shone dimly through them. Not one of these cobwebs
was ever molested--or had been from the beginning of time, as it seemed
to us. A velvet carpet on the floor was worn smooth and almost no trace
of its rich flowery pattern was left; but there were many square boxes
filled with sand or sawdust and reeking with cigar stumps and tobacco
juice. Need I add that some of those pictures were such as our young and