CHAPTER XXIII.
"Cakes, cakes, my good hot cakes!" Thus, in a plaintive voice, sang the old woman peddler who regularly, upon winter evenings, during the first ten or twelve years of my life, passed under our window .-- When I think of those bygone days I hear again her insistent refrain.
It is with the memory of Sundays that the song of the "good hot cakes" is most closely associated; for upon that evening, having no duties to perform in the way of lessons, I sat with my parents in the parlor upon the ground floor which overlooked the street; therefore, when almost upon the stroke of nine, the poor old woman passed along the sidewalk, and her sonorous chant broke into the stillness of the frosty night I was near enough to hear her distinctly.
She presaged the coming of cold weather as swallows announce the advent of the spring.

After a succession of cool autumnal days, the first time we heard her song we would say: "Well, we may conclude that winter is really here." This parlor where we sat together seemed a very immense room to me.
It was simply and tastefully furnished and arranged: the walls and the woodwork were brown, decorated with strips of gold: the furniture, dating from the time of Louis Philippe, was upholstered in red velvet; the family portraits were in severe black and gold frames; in the centre of the table, in the place of honor, there was a large Bible that had been printed in the sixteenth century.

This was a precious heirloom that had come down to us from our Huguenot ancestors who had, at that time, been persecuted for their faith.

We had baskets and vases of flowers disposed about the room, a custom which then was not so usual as it is now.
It was always a delicious moment for me when we left the dining-room and went into the parlor, for the latter room had an air of great peace and comfort; and when all the family were seated there in a circle, mother, grandmother and aunts, I began to skip about noisily in their midst from very joy at being surrounded by so many loved ones; and I waited impatiently for them to begin the little games which they were in the habit of playing with me early in the evening.

Our neighbors, the D----'s, came to see us every Sunday; it was a time-honored custom in our two families, between whom there existed a friendship that had its inception in the country generations before our time; it was a friendship which had been handed down to us as a precious heritage.