hat not? Phil
Adams (a special good name that Adams) is consul at Shanghai, where I
picture him to myself with his head closely shaved--he never had too much
hair--and a long pigtail banging down behind. He is married, I hear;
and I hope he and she that was Miss Wang Wang are very happy together,
sitting cross-legged over their diminutive cups of tea in a skyblue
tower hung with bells. It is so I think of him; to me he is henceforth
a jewelled mandarin, talking nothing but broken China. Whitcomb is a
judge, sedate and wise, with spectacles balanced on the bridge of that
remarkable nose which, in former days, was so plentifully sprinkled with
freckles that the boys christened him Pepper Whitcomb. Just to think
of little Pepper Whitcomb being a judge! What would he do to me now, I
wonder, if I were to sing out "Pepper!" some day in court? Fred Langdon
is in California, in the native-wine business--he used to make the best
licorice-water I ever tasted! Binny Wallace sleeps in the Old South
Burying-Ground; and Jack Harris, too, is dead--Harris, who commanded us
boys, of old, in the famous snow-ball battles of Slatter's Hill. Was it
yesterday I saw him at the head of his regiment on its way to join the
shattered Army of the Potomac? Not yesterday, but six years ago. It was
at the battle of the Seven Pines. Gallant Jack Harris, that never drew
rein until he had dashed into the Rebel battery! So they found him--lying
across the enemy's guns.

How we have parted, and wandered, and married, and died! I wonder what
has become of all the boys who went to the Temple Grammar School at
Rivermouth when I was a youngster? "All, all are gone, the old familiar
faces!"

It is with no ungentle hand I summon them back, for a moment, from that
Past which has closed upon them and upon me. How pleasantly they live
again in my memory! Happy, magical Past, in whose fairy atmosphere even
Conway, mine ancient foe, stands forth transfigured, with a sort of
dreamy glory encircling his bright red hair!

With the old school formula I commence these sketches of my boyhood. My
name is Tom Bailey; what is yours, gentle reader? I take for granted
it is neither Wiggins nor Spriggins, and that we shall get on famously
together, and be capital friends forever.

Chapter Two--In Which I Entertain Peculiar Views

I was born at Rivermouth, but, before I had a chance to become very well
acquainted with that pretty New England town, my parents removed