drum and fife took our ears by
storm; When the militia and the Light Infantry mustered and marched
through the streets to the Common with boys and girls at their
heels,--such girls as could get their mother's consent, or the courage
to run off without it.(We never could.)But we always managed to get a
good look at the show in one way or another.

"Old Election," "'Lection Day" we called it, a lost holiday now, was a
general training day, and it came at our most delightful season, the
last of May. Lilacs and tulips were in bloom, then; and it was a
picturesque fashion of the time for little girls whose parents had no
flower-gardens to go around begging a bunch of lilacs, or a tulip or
two. My mother always made "'Lection cake" for us on that day. It was
nothing but a kind of sweetened bread with a shine of egg-and-molasses
on top; but we thought it delicious.

The Fourth of July and Thanksgiving Day were the only other holidays
that we made much account of, and the former was a far more well
behaved festival than it is in modern times. The bells rang without
stint, and at morning and noon cannon were fired off. But torpedoes and
fire-crackers did not make the highways dangerous;--perhaps they were
thought too expensive an amusement. Somebody delivered an oration;
there was a good deal said about "this universal Yankee nation"; some
rockets went up from Salem in the evening; we watched them from the
hill, and then went to bed, feeling that we had been good patriots.

There was always a Fast Day, which I am afraid most of us younger ones
regarded merely as a day when we were to eat unlimited quantities of
molasses-gingerbread, instead of sitting down to our regular meals.

When I read about Christmas in the English story-books, I wished we
could have that beautiful holiday. But our Puritan fathers shook their
heads at Christmas.

Our Sabbath-school library books were nearly all English reprints, and
many of the story-books were very interesting. I think that most of my
favorites were by Mrs. Sherwood. Some of them were about life in
India,--"Little Henry and his Bearer," and "Ayah and Lady." Then there
were "The Hedge of Thorns;" "Theophilus and Sophia;" "Anna Ross," and a
whole series of little English books that I took great delight in.

I had begun to be rather introspective and somewhat unhealthily
self-critical, contrasting myself meanwhile with my sister Lida, just a
little older, who was my usual playmate, an