thrifty mother--another Prue--came snuffing and smelling about me.

"Why! my son, (_snuff, snuff,_) where have you been? (_snuff,
snuff._) Has the baker been making (_snuff_) ginger-bread? You
smell as if you'd been in (_snuff, snuff,_) a bag of cinnamon."

"I've only been on the wharves, mother."

"Well, my dear, I hope you haven't stuck up your clothes with
molasses. Wharves are dirty places, and dangerous. You must take care
of yourself, my son. Really this smell is (_snuff, snuff_,) very
strong."

But I departed from the maternal presence, proud and happy. I was
aromatic. I bore about me the true foreign air. Whoever smelt me smelt
distant countries. I had nutmeg, spices, cinnamon, and cloves, without
the jolly red-nose. I pleased myself with being the representative of
the Indies. I was in good odor with myself and all the world.

I do not know how it is, but surely Nature makes kindly provision. An
imagination so easily excited as mine could not have escaped
disappointment if it had had ample opportunity and experience of the
lands it so longed to see. Therefore, although I made the India
voyage, I have never been a traveller, and saving the little time I
was ashore in India, I did not lose the sense of novelty and romance,
which the first sight of foreign lands inspires.

That little time was all my foreign travel. I am glad of it. I see now
that I should never have found the country from which the East
Indiaman of my early days arrived. The palm groves do not grow with