Benjamin Breck made the foundation of a fortune.  It was his son who built on the Second Bank the wide, corniced mansion in which to house comfortably his eight children.  There, two tiers above the river, lived my paternal grandfather, Dr. Paret, the Breck’s physician and friend; the Durretts and the Hambletons, iron-masters; the Hollisters, Sherwins, the McAlerys and Ewanses,—­Breck connections,—­the Willetts and Ogilvys; in short, everyone of importance in the days between the ’thirties and the Civil War.  Theirs were generous houses surrounded by shade trees, with glorious back yards—­I have been told—­where apricots and pears and peaches and even nectarines grew.

The business of Breck and Company, wholesale grocers, descended to my mother’s first cousin, Robert Breck, who lived at Claremore.  The very sound of that word once sufficed to give me a shiver of delight; but the Claremore I knew has disappeared as completely as Atlantis, and the place is now a suburb (hateful word!) cut up into building lots and connected with Boyne Street and the business section of the city by trolley lines.  Then it was “the country,” and fairly saturated with romance.  Cousin Robert, when he came into town to spend his days at the store, brought with him some of this romance, I had almost said of this aroma.  He was no suburbanite, but rural to the backbone, professing a most proper contempt for dwellers in towns.

Every summer day that dawned held Claremore as a possibility.  And such was my capacity for joy that my appetite would depart completely when I heard my mother say, questioningly and with proper wifely respect—­

“If you’re really going off on a business trip for a day or two, Mr. Paret” (she generally addressed my father thus formally), “I think I’ll go to Robert’s and take Hugh.”

“Shall I tell Norah to pack, mother,” I would exclaim, starting up.

“We’ll see what your father thinks, my dear.”

“Remain at the table until you are excused, Hugh,” he would say.

Released at length, I would rush to Norah, who always rejoiced with me, and then to the wire fence which marked the boundary of the Peters domain next door, eager, with the refreshing lack of consideration characteristic of youth, to announce to the Peterses—­who were to remain at home the news of my good fortune.  There would be Tom and Alfred and Russell and Julia and little Myra with her grass-stained knees, faring forth to seek the adventures of a new day in the shady western yard.  Myra was too young not to look wistful at my news, but the others pretended indifference, seeking to lessen my triumph.  And it was Julia who invariably retorted “We can go out to Uncle Jake’s farm whenever we want to.  Can’t we, Tom?"...

No journey ever taken since has equalled in ecstasy that leisurely trip of thirteen miles in the narrow-gauge railroad that wound through hot fields of nodding corn tassels and between delicious, acrid-smelling woods to Claremore.  No silent palace “sleeping in the sun,” no edifice decreed by Kubla Khan could have worn more glamour than the house of Cousin Robert Breck.