the eclipsing of the involuntary object of the ceremony. His
occasions, happily, were not exclusively solemn; he added to his other
public services that of furnishing ice-cream for the evening parties.
I always thought--perhaps it was the working of an unchastened
imagination--that he managed to throw into his ice-creams a peculiar
chill not attained by either Dunyon or Peduzzi--arcades ambo--the rival
confectioners.

Perhaps I should not say rival, for Mr. Dunyon kept a species
of restaurant, while Mr. Peduzzi restricted himself to preparing
confections to be discussed elsewhere than on his premises. Both
gentlemen achieved great popularity in their respective lines, but
neither offered to the juvenile population quite the charm of those
prim, white-capped old ladies who presided over certain snuffy little
shops, occurring unexpectedly in silent side-streets where the football
of commerce seemed an incongruous thing. These shops were never intended
in nature. They had an impromptu and abnormal air about them. I do not
recall one that was not located in a private residence, and was not
evidently the despairing expedient of some pathetic financial crisis,
similar to that which overtook Miss Hepzibah Pyrcheon in The House
of the Seven Gables. The horizontally divided street door--the upper
section left open in summer--ushered you, with a sudden jangle of bell
that turned your heart over, into a strictly private hall, haunted
by the delayed aroma of thousands of family dinners. Thence, through
another door, you passed into what had formerly been the front parlor,
but was now a shop, with a narrow, brown, wooden counter, and several
rows of little drawers built up against the picture-papered wall behind
it. Through much use the paint on these drawers was worn off in circles
round the polished brass knobs. Here was stored almost every small
article required by humanity, from an inflamed emery cushion to a
peppermint Gibraltar--the latter a kind of adamantine confectionery
which, when I reflect upon it, raises in me the wonder that any
Portsmouth boy or girl ever reached the age of fifteen with a single
tooth left unbroken. The proprietors of these little knick-knack
establishments were the nicest creatures, somehow suggesting venerable
doves. They were always aged ladies, sometimes spinsters, sometimes
relicts of daring mariners, beached long before. They always wore crisp
muslin caps and steel-rimmed spectacles; they were