n with an unreasonably large brood of
chickens,--some must stay out in the wet, and all such surplusage got
soaked to the skin.

But we cared nothing for any of these things. Indeed, I am inclined to
think that we were happy in proportion as we got tired, hungry, wet, and
dirty. Mother never scolded us when we came home in this condition.
Though we smelt terribly of mud and fish, and were often smeared over
with the dried slime of a great slippery eel which had swallowed the
hook, and coiled himself in knots all over our lines, and required three
or four of the boys to cut off his head and get the hook out, yet all
she did was to make us wash ourselves clean, after which she gave us a
supper that tasted better than all the suppers we get now, and then put
us to bed. We were tired enough to go right to sleep; but it was the
fatigue of absolute happiness,--light hearts, light consciences, no
care, nothing but the perfect enjoyment of childhood, such as never
comes to us but once.

This is a long digression, but it could not be avoided. I said, that,
when mother told me I was to make a shirt for father, we were that very
afternoon to go down among these dear old meadows and dirty ditches to
fish and play. Our lines were all in order, and a new hook had been put
on mine, as on the last excursion the old one had caught in what the
boys call a "blind eel," that is, a sunken log,--and there it probably
remains to this day. Fred had dug worms for us, and they had coiled
themselves up into a huge ball in the shell of an old cocoa-nut, ready
to be impaled on our hooks. Everything was prepared for a start, and we
were only waiting for dinner to be over: though I can remember, that,
whenever we had such an afternoon before us, we had very little appetite
to satisfy. The anticipation and glee were such that the pervading
desire was not to eat, but to be off.

But when mother gave me the shirt to make, I felt so proud of the trust,
that all desire to go to the meadows left me. I felt a new sensation, a
new ambition, a new pride. It was very strange that I should thus
suddenly give up the ditches, the fishing, the scratching, and the dirt;
for none of us loved them more dearly than myself. But they were old and
familiar, and father's shirt was a novelty; and novelty is one of the
great attractions for the young. So they went without me, and after
dinner I sat down to make my first shirt.

It was to be made in the plainest way; for