Where He First Met His Parents--Nye 17

Where the Roads are Engaged in Forking--Nye 206

While Cigarettes to Ashes Turn--Riley 201

Why It Was Done--Nye & Riley 11

Where He First Met His Parents

[Illustration]

Last week I visited my birthplace in the State of Maine. I waited thirty
years for the public to visit it, and as there didn't seem to be much of
a rush this spring, I thought I would go and visit it myself. I was
telling a friend the other day that the public did not seem to manifest
the interest in my birthplace that I thought it ought to, and he said I
ought not to mind that. "Just wait," said he, "till the people of the
United States have an opportunity to visit your tomb, and you will be
surprised to see how they will run excursion trains up there to
Moosehead lake, or wherever you plant yourself. It will be a perfect
picnic. Your hold on the American people, William, is wonderful, but
your death would seem to assure it, and kind of crystallize the
affection now existing, but still in a nebulous and gummy state."

A man ought not to criticise his birthplace, I presume, and yet, if I
were to do it all over again, I do not know whether I would select that
particular spot or not. Sometimes I think I would not. And yet, what
memories cluster about that old house! There was the place where I first
met my parents. It was at that time that an acquaintance sprang up which
has ripened in later years into mutual respect and esteem. It was there
that what might be termed a casual meeting took place, that has, under
the alchemy of resist-less years, turned to golden links, forming a
pleasant but powerful bond of union between my parents and myself. For
that reason, I hope that I may be spared to my parents for many years to
come.

Many memories now cluster about that old home, as I have said. There is,
also, other bric-a-brac which has accumulated since I was born there. I
took a small stone from the front yard as a kind of memento of the
occasion and the place. I do not think it has been detected yet. There
was another stone in the yard, so it may be weeks before any one finds
out that I took one of them.

How humble the home, and yet what a lesson it should teach the boys of
America! Here, amid the barren and inhospitable waste of rocks and cold,
the last place in th