The first minister I remember was saintly Hiram Withington, who won my loyalty by his interest manifested by standing me up by the door-jamb and marking my growth from call to call.  I remember Rufus P. Stebbins, the former minister, who married my father and mother and refused a fee because my father had always cut his hair in the barberless days of old.  Amos A. Smith was later in succession.  I loved him for his goodness.  Sunday-school was always a matter of course, and was never dreaded.

I early enjoyed the Rollo books and later reveled in Mayne Reid.  The haymow in the barn and a blessed knothole are associated with many happy hours.

Reading has dangers.  I think one of the first books I ever read was a bound volume of Merry’s Museum.  There was a continued story recounting the adventures of one Dick Boldhero.  It was illustrated with horrible woodcuts.  One of them showed Dick bearing on a spirited charger the clasped form of the heroine, whom he had abducted.  It impressed me deeply.  I recognized no distinction of sex or attractiveness and lived in terror of suffering abduction.  When I saw a stranger coming I would run into the shop and clasp my arms around some post until I felt the danger past.  This must have been very early in my career.  Indeed one of my aunts must have done the reading, leaving me to draw distress from the thrilling illustrations.

A very early trial was connected with a visit to a school.  I was getting proud of my ability to spell small words.  A primer-maker had attempted to help the association of letters with objects by placing them in juxtaposition, but through a mistake he led me to my undoing.  I knew my letters and I knew some things.  I plainly distinguished the letters P-A-N.  Against them I was puzzled by a picture of a spoon, and with credulity, perhaps characteristic, I blurted out “P-a-n—­spoon,” whereat to my great discomfiture everybody laughed.  I have never liked being laughed at from that day to this.

I am glad that I left New England early, but I am thankful that it was not before I realized the loveliness of the arbutus as it braved the snow and smiled at the returning sun, nor that I made forts or played morris in the snow at school.

I have passed on from my first impressions in the country perhaps unwarrantedly.  It is hard to differentiate consistently.  I may have mixed early memories with more mature realization.  I did not live with my grandmother continuously.  I went back and forth as convenience and others’ desires prompted.  I do not know what impressions of life in the Pemberton House came first.  Very early I remember helping my busy little mother, who in the spring of the year uncorded all the bedsteads and made life miserable for the festive bedbugs by an application of whale oil from a capable feather applied to the inside of all holes through which the ropes ran.  The re-cording of the beds was a tedious process requiring two persons, and I soon grew big enough to count as one.  I remember also the little triangular tin candlesticks that we inserted at the base of each of the very small panes of the window when we illuminated the hotel on special nights.  I distinctly recall the quivering of the full glasses of jelly on tapering disks that formed attractive table ornaments.