made brighter and more smiling the splendor of the
sunshine and, by that much more, influenced one's feelings.

Constance held by preference to the seagoing traditions of her family.
Since she was a child, the lake and the life of the ships had delighted
and fascinated her; very early she had discovered that, upon the lake,
she was permitted privileges sternly denied upon land--an arbitrary
distinction which led her to designate water, when she was a little
girl, as her family's "respectable element." For while her father's
investments were, in part, on the water, her mother's property all was
on the land. Her mother, who was a Seaton, owned property somewhere in
the city, in common with Constance's uncles; this property consisted,
as Constance succeeded in ascertaining about the time she was nine, of
large, wholesale grocery buildings. They and the "brand" had been in
the possession of the Seaton family for many years; both Constance's
uncles worked in the big buildings where the canning was done; and,
when Constance was taken to visit them, she found the place most
interesting--the berries and fruit coming up in great steaming
cauldrons; the machines pushing the cans under the enormous faucets
where the preserves ran out and then sealing the cans and pasting the
bright Seaton "brand" about them. The people there were
interesting--the girls with flying fingers sorting fruit, and the men
pounding the big boxes together; and the great shaggy-hoofed horses
which pulled the huge, groaning wagons were most fascinating. She
wanted to ride on one of the wagons; but her request was promptly and
completely squashed.

It was not "done"; nor was anything about the groceries and the canning
to be mentioned before visitors; Constance brought up the subject once
and found out. It was different about her father's ships. She could
talk about them when she wanted to; and her father often spoke of them;
and any one who came to the house could speak about them. Ships,
apparently, were respectable.

When she went down to the docks with her father, she could climb all
over them, if she was only careful of her clothes; she could spend a
day watching one of her father's boats discharging grain or another
unloading ore; and, when she was twelve, for a great treat, her father
took her on one of the freighters to Duluth; and for one delightful,
wonderful week she chummed with the captain and mates and wheelmen and
learned all the pi