te, at that time."

"Very good. Even little boys have memories. Is there any objection to
your telling me what you can remember?"

Amelius answered rather sadly, with his eyes bent on the deck. "I
remember something happening which threw a gloom over us at home in
England. I heard that my mother was concerned in it. When I grew older,
I never presumed to ask my father what it was; and he never offered to
tell me. I only know this: that he forgave her some wrong she had done
him, and let her go on living at home--and that relations and friends
all blamed him, and fell away from him, from that time. Not long
afterwards, while I was at school, my mother died. I was sent for, to
follow her funeral with my father. When we got back, and were alone
together, he took me on his knee and kissed me. 'Which will you do,
Amelius,' he said; 'stay in England with your uncle and aunt? or come
with me all the way to America, and never go back to England again? Take
time to think of it.' I wanted no time to think of it; I said, 'Go with
you, papa.' He frightened me by bursting out crying; it was the first
time I had ever seen him in tears. I can understand it now. He had been
cut to the heart, and had borne it like a martyr; and his boy was his
one friend left. Well, by the end of the week we were on board the ship;
and there we met a benevolent gentleman, with a long gray beard, who
bade my father welcome, and presented me with a cake. In my ignorance,
I thought he was the captain. Nothing of the sort. He was the first
Socialist I had ever seen; and it was he who had persuaded my father to
leave England."

Mr. Hethcote's opinions of Socialists began to show themselves (a little
sourly) in Mr. Hethcote's smile. "And how did you get on with this
benevolent gentleman?" he asked. "After converting your father, did he
convert you--with the cake?"

Amelius smiled. "Do him justice, sir; he didn't trust to the cake. He
waited till we were in sight of the American land--and then he preached
me a little sermon, on our arrival, entirely for my own use."

"A sermon?" Mr. Hethcote repeated. "Very little religion in it, I
suspect."

"Very little indeed, sir," Amelius answered. "Only as much religion as
there is in the New Testament. I was not quite old enough to understand
him easily--so he wrote down his discourse on the fly-leaf of a
story-book I had with me, and gave it to me to read when I was tired of
the stories. Stories were scarce with