street, and then our lane came out directly opposite the finest
house in town, a three-story edifice of brick, painted white, the
"Colonel's" residence. There was a spacious garden behind it,
from which we caught glimpses and perfumes of unknown flowers.
Over its high walls hung boughs of splendid great yellow sweet
apples, which, when they fell on the outside, we children
considered as our perquisites. When I first read about the apples
of the Hesperides, my idea of them was that they were like the
Colonel's "pumpkin-sweetings."

Beyond the garden were wide green fields which reached eastward
down to the beach. It was one of those large old estates which
used to give to the very heart of our New England coast towns a
delightful breeziness and roominess.

A coach-and-pair was one of the appurtenances of this estate,
with a coachman on the box; and when he took the family out for
an airing we small children thought it was a sort of Cinderella
spectacle, prepared expressly for us.

It was not, however, quite so interesting as the Boston stage -
coach, that rolled regularly every day past the head of our lane
into and out of its headquarters, a big, unpainted stable close
at hand. This stage-coach, in our minds, meant the city,--twenty
miles off; an immeasurable distance to us then. Even our elders
did not go there very often.

In those early days, towns used to give each other nicknames,
like schoolboys. Ours was called "Bean-town" not because it was
especially devoted to the cultivation of this leguminous edible,