but probably because it adhered a long time to the Puritanic
custom of saving Sunday-work by baking beans on Saturday evening,
leaving them in the oven over night. After a while, as families
left off heating their ovens, the bean-pots were taken by the
village baker on Saturday afternoon, who returned them to each
house early on Sunday morning with the pan of brown bread that
went with them. The jingling of the baker's bells made the matter
a public one.

The towns through which our stage-coach passed sometimes called
it the "bean-pot." The Jehn who drove it was something of a wag.
Once, coming through Charlestown, while waiting in the street for
a resident passenger, he was hailed by another resident who
thought him obstructing the passage, with the shout,--

"Halloo there! Get your old bean-pot out of the way!"

"I will, when I have got my pork in," was the ready reply. What
the sobriquet of Charlestown was, need not be explained.

We had a good opportunity to watch both coaches, as my father's
shop was just at the head of the lane, and we went to school up-
stairs in the same building. After he left off going to sea,--
before my birth,--my father took a store for the sale of what
used to be called "West India goods," and various other domestic
commodities.

The school was kept by a neighbor whom everybody called "Aunt
Hannah." It took in all the little ones about us, no matter how
young they were, provided they could walk and talk, and were