winding-up of the town clock, and the ringing of the bell on
week-days and Sundays, and the tolling for funerals,--into which
mysteries he sometimes allowed us youngsters a furtive glimpse.
I did not believe that there was another grandfather so
delightful as ours in all the world.

Uncles, aunts, and cousins were plentiful in the family, but they
did not live near enough for us to see them very often, excepting
one aunt, my father's sister, for whom I was named. She was fair,
with large, clear eyes that seemed to look far into one's heart,
with an expression at once penetrating and benignant. To my
childish imagination she was an embodiment of serene and lofty
goodness. I wished and hoped that by bearing her baptismal name I
might become like her; and when I found out its signification (I
learned that "Lucy" means "with light"), I wished it more
earnestly still. For her beautiful character was just such an
illumination to my young life as I should most desire mine to be
to the lives of others.

My aunt, like my father, was always studying something. Some map
or book always lay open before her, when I went to visit her, in
her picturesque old house, with its sloping roof and tall well-
sweep. And she always brought out some book or picture for me
from her quaint old-fashioned chest of drawers. I still possess
the " Children in the Wood," which she gave me, as a keepsake,
when I was about ten years old.

Our relatives form the natural setting of our childhood. We
understand ourselves best and are best understood by others
through the persons who came nearest to us in our earliest years.