the greater portion of their
lives on their own door-steps. Many of those details of the toilet which
a popular prejudice restricts to the dressing-room in other localities,
were here performed in the open court without fear and without reproach.
Early in the week the court was hid in a choking, soapy mist, which
arose from innumerable washtubs. This was followed in a day or two later
by an extraordinary exhibition of wearing apparel of divers colors,
fluttering on lines like a display of bunting on ship-board, and whose
flapping in the breeze was like irregular discharges of musketry. It was
evident also that the court exercised a demoralizing influence over the
whole neighborhood. A sanguine property-owner once put up a handsome
dwelling on the corner of our street, and lived therein; but although
he appeared frequently on his balcony, clad in a bright crimson
dressing-gown, which made him look like a tropical bird of some rare
and gorgeous species, he failed to woo any kindred dressing-gown to the
vicinity, and only provoked opprobrious epithets from the gamins of the
court. He moved away shortly after, and on going by the house one day,
I noticed a bill of "Rooms to let, with board," posted conspicuously on
the Corinthian columns of the porch. McGinnis Court had triumphed. An
interchange of civilities at once took place between the court and
the servants' area of the palatial mansion, and some of the young men
boarders exchange playful slang with the adolescent members of the
court. From that moment we felt that our claims to gentility were
forever abandoned.

Yet, we enjoyed intervals of unalloyed contentment. When the twilight
toned down the hard outlines of the oaks, and made shadowy clumps and
formless masses of other bushes, it was quite romantic to sit by the
window and inhale the faint, sad odor of the fennel in the walks below.
Perhaps this economical pleasure was much enhanced by a picture in my
memory, whose faded colors the odor of this humble plant never failed to
restore. So I often sat there of evenings and closed my eyes until the
forms and benches of a country schoolroom came back to me, redolent with
the incense of fennel covertly stowed away in my desk, and gazed again
in silent rapture on the round, red cheeks and long black braids of that
peerless creature whose glance had often caused my cheeks to glow over
the preternatural collar, which at that period of my boyhood it was
my pride and privile