altogether unique one perhaps, this shrinking away from life at its
very beginning; I was not able to see a horizon before me: I could not
picture my future to myself as so many can; before me there was nothing
but impenetrable darkness, a great leaden curtain shut off my view.




CHAPTER XXIII.



"Cakes, cakes, my good hot cakes!" Thus, in a plaintive voice, sang the
old woman peddler who regularly, upon winter evenings, during the first
ten or twelve years of my life, passed under our window.--When I think
of those bygone days I hear again her insistent refrain.

It is with the memory of Sundays that the song of the "good hot cakes"
is most closely associated; for upon that evening, having no duties to
perform in the way of lessons, I sat with my parents in the parlor upon
the ground floor which overlooked the street; therefore, when almost
upon the stroke of nine, the poor old woman passed along the sidewalk,
and her sonorous chant broke into the stillness of the frosty night I
was near enough to hear her distinctly.

She presaged the coming of cold weather as swallows announce the advent
of the spring. After a succession of cool autumnal days, the first time
we heard her song we would say: "Well, we may conclude that winter is
really here."