shed abilities. Here he heard further particulars of the
battle of Bunker's Hill, fought near Boston a few days before. From
New York, the general-in-chief proceeded to Boston, and was greeted
everywhere on the way with the greatest enthusiasm by the people, who
came streaming in from all quarters to behold the man into whose
keeping had been intrusted the destinies of America.

Thus, my dear children, I have brought you, step by step, up to that
great event in Washington's life when his character and actions were
to be subjected to the gaze and scrutiny, not only of his own age and
country, but of all ages to come, and of all the nations of
Christendom.

XXVI.

CONCLUSION.

Here Uncle Juvinell paused, and, with a countenance of undisturbed
sobriety, emptied his ninth mug. In justice, however, to the good man,
this pattern of old-fashioned gentility, it must be borne in mind,
that the mug was a Dutch mug, and consequently a small one (as indeed
are all things Dutch, from clocks to cheeses); and also that, small as
it was, he never more than half filled it, except once or twice in the
course of an evening, when he would gird up his loins, as it were,
with a brimmer to help him over some passage in his story of unusual
knottiness and difficulty.

Willie (whose surname should have been fox or weasel or lynx), having
heretofore divided his attention between what his uncle imparted and
what he imbibed, had, by careful counting, discovered that the ninth
mug invariably closed their evening lessons: so, without waiting for
any further signal that such was now the case, he alertly bounced from
his chair, and, snatching up a basket of big red apples that black
daddy had just brought in and set on the hearth, began handing them
round to the rest of the company with a great show of playing the
polite and obliging, but taking care, when unobserved, to pick out the
largest and mellowest one of them all for himself, and smuggle it
under his coat-tail. When all were helped, he reset the basket on the
hearth, and with a grand flourish, unmasking his royal red, opened
wide his mouth, as if he would have bolted it whole: but, seeming to
think better of it, he carefully laid it in Uncle Juvinell's mug,
which it exactly filled, saying as he did so, "It goes to my heart to
part with you; but only the king of historians is worthy to enjoy the
queen of apples." Then, plunging his hand into the basket, he snatched
up another, ha