handfuls of dahlias, the first I had ever seen. I thought them
marvelous in size and beauty and, as in the case of my aunt's lilies,
wondered if I should ever be rich enough to own some of them.

Although I never dared to touch my aunt's sacred lilies, I have good
cause to remember stealing some common flowers from an apothecary,
Peter Lawson, who also answered the purpose of a regular physician to
most of the poor people of the town and adjacent country. He had a
pony which was considered very wild and dangerous, and when he was
called out of town he mounted this wonderful beast, which, after
standing long in the stable, was frisky and boisterous, and often to
our delight reared and jumped and danced about from side to side of
the street before he could be persuaded to go ahead. We boys gazed in
awful admiration and wondered how the druggist could be so brave and
able as to get on and stay on that wild beast's back. This famous
Peter loved and when she anxiously took me in her arms and inquired
what was the matter, I told her that I had swallowed my tongue. She
only laughed at me, much to my astonishment, when I expected that she
would bewail the awful loss her boy had sustained. My sisters, who
were older than I, oftentimes said when I happened to be talking too
much, "It's a pity you hadn't swallowed at least half of that long
tongue of yours when you were little."

It appears natural for children to be fond of water, although the
Scotch method of making every duty dismal contrived to make necessary
bathing for health terrible to us. I well remember among the awful
experiences of childhood being taken by the servant to the seashore
when I was between two and three years old, stripped at the side of a
deep pool in the rocks, plunged into it among crawling crawfish and
slippery wriggling snake-like eels, and drawn up gasping and shrieking