weakness I got
the habit of at a very early age.--I won't swear that I have not
some tendency to these not wise practices even at this present
date. [How many of you that read these notes can say the same
thing!]

With these follies mingled sweet delusions, which I loved so well I
would not outgrow them, even when it required a voluntary effort to
put a momentary trust in them. Here is one which I cannot help
telling you.

The firing of the great guns at the Navy-yard is easily heard at
the place where I was born and lived. "There is a ship of war come
in," they used to say, when they heard them. Of course, I supposed
that such vessels came in unexpectedly, after indefinite years of
absence,--suddenly as falling stones; and that the great guns
roared in their astonishment and delight at the sight of the old
war-ship splitting the bay with her cutwater. Now, the sloop-of-
war the Wasp, Captain Blakely, after gloriously capturing the
Reindeer and the Avon, had disappeared from the face of the ocean,
and was supposed to be lost. But there was no proof of it, and, of
course, for a time, hopes were entertained that she might be heard
from. Long after the last real chance had utterly vanished, I
pleased myself with the fond illusion that somewhere on the waste
of waters she was still floating, and there were YEARS during which
I never heard the sound of the great guns booming inland from the
Navy-yard without saying to myself, "The Wasp has come!" and almost
thinking I could see her, as she rolled in, crumpling the water
before her, weather-beaten, barnacled, with shattered spars and
threadbare canvas, welcomed by the shouts and tears of thousands.
This was one of those dreams that I nursed and never told. Let me
make a clean breast of it now, and say, that, so late as to have
outgrown childhood, perhaps to have got far on towards manhood,
when the roar of the cannon has struck suddenly on my ear, I have
started with a thrill of vague expectation and tremulous delight,
and the long-unspoken words have articulated themselves in the
mind's dumb whisper, THE WASP HAS COME!

--Yes, children believe plenty of queer things. I suppose all of
you have had the pocket-book fever when you were little?--What do I
mean? Why, ripping up old pocket-books in the firm belief that
bank-bills to an immense amount were hidden in them.--So, too, you
must all remember some splendid unfulfilled promise of somebody or
other, which fe