to the older ones. I think I looked upon both school and shop
entirely as places of entertainment for little children.

The front shop-window was especially interesting to us children,
for there were in it a few glass jars containing sticks of
striped barley-candy, and red and white peppermint-drops, and
that delectable achievement of the ancient confectioner's art,
the "Salem gibraltar." One of my first recollections of my father
is connected with that window. He had taken me into the shop with
him after dinner,--I was perhaps two years old,--and I was
playing beside him on the counter when one of his old sea-
comrades came in, whom we knew as "Captain Cross." The Captain
tried to make friends with me, and, to seal the bond, asked my
father to take down from its place of exhibition a strip of red
peppermints dropped on white paper, in a style I particularly
admired, which he twisted around my neck, saying, "Now I've
bought you! Now you are my girl. Come, go home with me!"

His words sounded as if be meant them. I took it all in earnest,
and ran, scared and screaming, to my father, dashing down the
sugar-plums I wanted so much, and refusing even to bestow a
glance upon my amused purchaser. My father pacified me by taking
me on his shoulders and carrying me "pickaback" up and down the
shop, and I clung to him in the happy consciousness that I
belonged to him, and that be would not let anybody else have me;
though I did not feel quite easy until Captain Cross disappeared.
I suppose that this little incident has always remained in my
memory because it then for the first time became a fact in my
consciousness that my father really loved me as I loved him. He
was not at all a demonstrative man, and any petting that he gave