umption now dawning of his "community of pursuits" with my own, was
from that moment, off and on, for a few years, my extremely easy
yokefellow and playfellow. On William, charged with learning--I thought
of him inveterately from our younger time as charged with learning--no
such trick was played; he rested or roamed, that summer, on his
accumulations; a fact which, as I was sure I saw these more and more
richly accumulate, didn't in the least make me wonder. It comes back to
me in truth that I had been prepared for anything by his having said to
me toward the end of our time at Lavinia D's and with characteristic
authority--his enjoyment of it coming from my character, I mean, quite
as much as from his own--that that lady was a very able woman, as shown
by the Experiments upstairs. He was upstairs of course, and I was down,
and I scarce even knew what Experiments were, beyond their indeed
requiring capability. The region of their performance was William's
natural sphere, though I recall that I had a sense of peeping into it to
a thrilled effect on seeing our instructress illustrate the proper way
to extinguish a candle. She firmly pressed the flame between her thumb
and her two forefingers, and, on my remarking that I didn't see how she
could do it, promptly replied that I of course couldn't do it myself (as
_he_ could) because I should be afraid.

That reflection on my courage awakes another echo of the same scant
season--since the test involved must have been that of our taking our
way home through Fourth Avenue from some point up town, and Mrs.
Wright's situation in East Twenty-first Street was such a point. The
Hudson River Railroad was then in course of construction, or was being
made to traverse the upper reaches of the city, through that part of
which raged, to my young sense, a riot of explosion and a great shouting
and waving of red flags when the gunpowder introduced into the rocky
soil was about to take effect. It was our theory that our passage there,
in the early afternoon, was beset with danger, and our impression that
we saw fragments of rock hurtle through the air and smite to the earth
another and yet another of the persons engaged or exposed. The point of
honour, among several of us, was of course nobly to defy the danger, and
I feel again the emotion with which I both hoped and feared that the red
flags, lurid signals descried from afar, would enable or compel us to
renew the feat. That I didn't for m