"Well, the poor really seem to use more of those luxuries than anybody
else. I don't blame them. I shouldn't care for the necessaries of life
myself, if I found them so hard to get."

"When I came back here," says Cousin Lucy, without heeding these flippant
and heartless words, "I found an old gentleman who has something to do
with the boats, and he sat down, as if it were a part of his business, and
told me nearly the whole history of his life. Isn't it nice of them,
keeping an Autobiographer? It makes the time pass so swiftly when you're
waiting. This old gentleman was born--who'd ever think it?--up there in
Pearl Street, where those pitiless big granite stores are now; and, I
don't know why, but the idea of any human baby being born in Pearl Street
seemed to me one of the saddest things I'd ever heard of."

Here Cousin Lucy went to the rescue of the nurse and the baby, who had got
into one of their periodical difficulties, and her interlocutor turned to
Aunt Melissa.

"I think, Franklin," says Aunt Melissa, "that it was wrong to let that
nurse come and bring the baby."

"Yes, I know, Aunty, you have those old-established ideas, and they're
very right," answers her nephew; "but just consider how much she enjoys
it, and how vastly the baby adds to the pleasure of this charming
excursion!"

Aunt Melissa made no reply, but sat thoughtfully out upon the bay. "I
presume you think the excursion is a failure," she said, after a while;
"but I've been enjoying every minute of the time here. Of course, I've
never seen the open sea, and I don't know about it, but I feel here just