ummer. While the log was running through the saw, it was
my never ending delight to lean out of an opening in the side of the
mill and watch the tailrace rush from under the building. All winter I
looked forward to the day when the great gates of the dam would be
raised and the pond disappear in a few hours. I cannot exactly describe
the feeling with which, after a few days of sunshine, I walked over the
ground where the water had stood; a strange commingling of awe and
curiosity, especially as I threaded the now dry, narrow and deep canal,
which led the water of the pond to the mill. There I often walked just
to enjoy in imagination the thought, what if the water should suddenly
come pouring down upon me! I even selected the best places to escape up
the rough stone walls of the canal. All my boyhood I enjoyed thrilling
imaginary perils, and the planning means of escape. The walls of this
canal were made of irregular stones from the field. Alternately wet and
dry they had taken on beautiful colors, variegated according to the
character of the stone, and between them in summer, and quite covering
them in places, grew many kinds of wild flowers, mosses and ferns, and,
most splendid of all, the cardinal flower. The canal was always damp,
and a few frogs and green snakes made it their summer home. Do not
imagine I made any such observations as these at the time, least of all
that I then knew the cardinal flower by its correct name. I saw, I felt,
I dreamed; now I remember and know a little more. I lacked the right
name and reason for most things, but knowing nothing, I named everything
after my own fancy and found the creation as good and sweet as the
Creator at the end of his week's work. Every boy is a new Adam, and
christens the world of his senses in the most primitive figure of
language, metonomy.

The terms of my apprenticeship included a new suit of clothes each year,
and that I should be sent to school in the summer. The clothes were
never forthcoming and my mother had to furnish them. My master gave me
my boots for winter and shoes for summer, but I went barefooted seven
months of the year. This was no hardship. How I hated to wear shoes on
the only day when it was compulsory, Sunday. It cost me tears to learn
to tie a double bow knot with my shoestring, as my master insisted upon
my doing, and this was the only thing during my apprenticeship that he
took pains to teach me--to tie a shoestring. He was a silent,
sel