And here's me, a little shaver, squattin' on the floor by the stove, lookin' at the pictures in a heap of Godey's Lady's Book.

And says dad, 'Bos'n,' he says--he used to call me 'Bos'n' in those days--'Bos'n,' says dad, 'run down cellar and fetch me up a pitcher of cider, that's a good feller.' Yes, yes; that's this room as I've seen it in my mind ever since I tiptoed through it the night I run away, with my duds in a bundle under my arm.

Do you wonder I was fightin' mad when I saw what that Howes tribe had done to it ?" Superintending the making over of the old home occupied most of Captain Cy's daylight time that summer.

His evenings were spent at Simmons's store.

We have no clubs in Bayport, strictly speaking, for the sewing circle and the Shakespeare Reading Society are exclusively feminine in membership; therefore Simmons's store is the gathering place of those males who are bachelors or widowers or who are sufficiently free from petticoat government to risk an occasional evening out.