rly disposed of,
there will be no lack of mere incident or event of objective nature and
more general interest.

My first winter at Jamaica Plains was the terrible one of 1835, during
which I myself saw the thermometer at 50 degrees Fahrenheit below zero,
and there was a snow-bank in the play-ground from October till May. The
greatest care possible was taken of us boys to keep us warm and well, but
we still suffered very much from chilblains. Water thrown into the air
froze while falling. Still there were some happy lights and few shadows
in it all. The boys skated or slid on beautiful Jamaica Pond, which was
near the school. There was a general giving of sleds to us all; mine
broke to pieces at once. I never had luck with any plaything, never
played ball or marbles, and hardly ever had even a top. Nor did I ever
have much to do with any games, or even learn in later years to play
cards, which was all a great pity. Sports should be as carefully looked
to in early education as book-learning. I had also a pair of dear
gazelle-skates given to me with the rest, but they also broke up on first
trial, and I have never owned any since. Destiny was always against me
in such matters.

The boys built two large snow-houses, roofed in or arched over with hard
snow. One was ingeniously and appropriately like an Eskimo hut, with a
rather long winding passage leading into it. Of these I wrote in the
spring, when the sun had begun to act, "one is almost annihilated, and of
the other not a _vestage_ remains." I found the letter by chance many
years later.

There lived in Boston some friends of my mother's named Gay. In the
family was an old lady over eighty, who was a wonderfully lively spirited
person. She still sang, as I thought, very beautifully, to the lute, old
songs such as "The merry days of good Queen Bess," and remembered the old
Colonial time as if it were of yesterday. One day Mr. Gay came out and
took me to his house, where I remained from Saturday until Monday; during
which time I found among the books, and very nearly read through, all the
poems of Peter Pindar or Doctor Wolcott. Precious reading it was for a
boy of eleven, yet I enjoyed it immensely. While there, I found in the
earth in the garden an oval, dark-green porphyry pebble, which I, moved
by a strange feeling, preserved for many years as an amulet. It is very
curious that exactly such pebbles are found as fetishes all over the
world, and t