Titus walked in, with his coat pockets so bulgy and rustling and
odorous of peppermint and sassafras, that it was no use to pretend
to wait and be unconscious, but a pure mercy to unload him so that
he might be able to sit down.

Nobody knows to this day where he got them; he must have ordered
them somewhere, one would think, long enough before to have special
moulds and implements made; but there were large, beautiful
cockles,--not of the old flour-paste sort, but of clear, sparkling
sugar, rose-color, and amber, and white, with little slips of tinted
paper tucked within, and these printed delicately with pretty rhymes
and couplets, from real poets; things to be truly treasured, yet
simple, for children's apprehension, and fancy, and fun. And there
were "Salem gibraltars," such as we only get out of Essex County now
and then, for a big charitable Fair, when Salem and everywhere else
gets its spirit up to send its best and most especial; and there
were toys and devices in sugar--flowers and animals, hats, bonnets,
and boots, apples, and cucumbers,--such as Diana and Hazel, and even
Desire and Helena had never seen before.

"It isn't quite fair," said good Miss Craydocke. "We were to go back
to the old, simple fashions of things; and here you are beginning
over again already with sumptuous inventions. It's the very way it
came about before, till it was all spoilt."

"No," said Uncle Titus, stoutly. "It's only 'Old _and_ New,'--the
very selfsame good old notions brought to a little modern
perfection. They're not French flummery, either; and there's not a
drop of gin, or a flavor of prussic acid, or any other abominable
chemical, in one of those contrivances. They're as innocent as they