t it had a mysterious
interest for us little ones. We held it to our ears, and listened for
the sound of the waves, which we were told that, it still kept, and
always would keep. I remember the time when I thought that the ocean
was really imprisoned somewhere within that narrow aperture.

We were accustomed to seeing barrels full of cocoa-nuts rolled about;
and there were jars of preserved tropical fruits, tamarinds,
ginger-root, and other spicy appetizers, almost as common as barberries
and cranberries, in the cupboards of most housekeepers.

I wonder what has become of those many, many little red "guinea-peas"
we had to play with! It never seemed as if they really belonged to the
vegetable world, notwithstanding their name.

We had foreign coins mixed in with our large copper cents,--all kinds,
from the Russian "kopeck" to the "half-penny token" of Great Britain.
Those were the days when we had half cents in circulation to make
change with. For part of our currency was the old-fashioned
"ninepence,"--twelve and a half cents, and the "four pence
ha'penny,"--six cents and a quarter. There was a good deal of Old
England about us still.

And we had also many living reminders of strange lands across the sea.
Green parrots went scolding and laughing down the thimbleberry hedges
that bordered the cornfields, as much at home out of doors as within.
Java sparrows and canaries and other tropical songbirds poured their
music out of sunny windows into the street, delighting the ears of
passing school children long before the robins came. Now and then
somebody's pet monkey would escape along the stone walls and
shed-roofs, and try to hide from his boy-persecutors by dodging behind
a chimney, or by slipping through an open scuttle, to the terror and
delight of juveniles whose premises he invaded.

And there were wanderers from foreign countries domesticated in many
families, whose swarthy complexions and un-Caucasian features became
familiar in our streets,--Mongolians, Africans, and waifs from the
Pacific islands, who always were known to us by distinguished
names,--Hector and Scipio, and Julius Caesar and Christopher Columbus.
Families of black people were scattered about the place, relics of a
time when even New England had not freed her slaves. Some of them had
belonged in my great-grandfather's family, and they hung about the old
homestead at "The Farms" long after they were at liberty to go anywhere
they pleased. There