er four
or five townships seeking to take my life. If I had been full-grown, of
course he would have been right; but, child as I was, I could not know
how wicked a thing I had done.

I made one of those remarks ordinarily called "smart things" before
that, but it was not a pun. Still, it came near causing a serious
rupture between my father and myself. My father and mother, my uncle
Ephraim and his wife, and one or two others were present, and the
conversation turned on a name for me. I was lying there trying some
India-rubber rings of various patterns, and endeavoring to make a
selection, for I was tired of trying to cut my teeth on people's
fingers, and wanted to get hold of something that would enable me to
hurry the thing through and get something else. Did you ever notice
what a nuisance it was cutting your teeth on your nurse's finger, or how
back-breaking and tiresome it was trying to cut them on your big toe?
And did you never get out of patience and wish your teeth were in Jerico
long before you got them half cut? To me it seems as if these things
happened yesterday. And they did, to some children. But I digress. I
was lying there trying the India-rubber rings. I remember looking at the
clock and noticing that in an hour and twenty-five minutes I would be
two weeks old, and thinking how little I had done to merit the blessings
that were so unsparingly lavished upon me. My father said:

"Abraham is a good name. My grandfather was named Abraham."

My mother said:

"Abraham is a good name. Very well. Let us have Abraham for one of his
names."

I said:

"Abraham suits the subscriber."

My father frowned, my mother looked pleased; my aunt said:

"What a little darling it is!"

My father said:

"Isaac is a good name, and Jacob is a good name."

My mother assented, and said:

"No names are better. Let us add Isaac and Jacob to his names."

I said:

"All right. Isaac and Jacob are good enough for yours truly. Pass me
that rattle, if you please. I can't chew India-rubber rings all day."

Not a soul made a memorandum of these sayings of mine, for publication.
I saw that, and did it myself, else they would have been utterly lost.
So far from meeting with a generous encouragement like other children
when developing intellectually, I was now furiously scowled upon by my
father; my mother looked grieved and anxious, and even my aunt had about
her an expression of seeming to think that maybe I had gone too