The flood gates of memory opened wide as the lamented Queen of England, with the weight of eighty years resting upon her, was wheeled in her chair, from room to room in the old fashioned brick palace at Kensington. Here in this unpretentious princely abode with its beautiful name, she was born, and here when she was waked very early out of heavy sleep to be hailed, Queen, she said prettily, "I will be good."

She kept her word. Here remain, as she left them her doll's house, the miniature counter where she sold ribbons and laces to imaginary customers, the doll's linen, marked with her own childish cross-stitch and the furniture and mementoes which cause the plain, irregular, rather homely structure to be hallowed as the shrine of Victoria. Here she saw her little set of cooking utensils, her child's scrapbook and little boxes of paints with camel's hair brushes. She lingered lovingly over these objects, which once meant so much to her, and as the vivid association and tender suggestiveness of her surroundings touched her feelings, in the presence of a group of dolls, being amid her toys, she desired the attendants who accompanied her to withdraw, expressing the desire, in that sacred place, to be alone.

The Glory of Life in its First Spring

On revisiting the earth I wanted to be alone on reaching my memory room. In that corner stood my trundle bed and about here, well say about there, is where I kneeled to say my earliest prayers. I have never felt so rich since, as I did when I came into the undisputed and sole possession of a hair-covered trunk which I could lock and bear away the key. Into this trunk I emptied the week's accumulation of all my week-day pockets as often as I put on my Sunday clothes. In this old hide-bound trunk were my sainted mother's letters, and missives with my own name in large John Hancock looking letters on the back, from my grandfather who kept store and sometimes sent me pocket pieces of money. On the outside of the pack, always in view, always to be kept, no more resembling others than an electric light resembles a tallow dip, was the first letter personally addressed to me that I ever received. Here was a child's cheap album containing photographs of Commodore Nutt and Minnie Warren, of a family of Albinos having white hair and pink eyes, and of a fat boy only 16 years old that had struck me with wonder. Here is a red morocco bag in which I kept my ill-gotten gains in marbles. Although forbidden to play "keeps" myself, the neighbor's boy, a surer shot, did not hesitate with my capital to engage in the excitement and to make a "divy" of the proceeds, while I watched the game, and as a better disciple carried the bag. I used to feel a real pride in my collection. I knew the price of each kind and computed the value of them all to a cent. That day was marked by the event when I exchanged so many of the brown, baked, clay sort, for a big taw alley (made of alabaster). Some of the big chinas were striped in varied colors and we made a sharp difference between those where the bright color was laid on and soon began to wash and wear and those where it was baked in like the pictures on cups, where it is as indestructible as the material itself. To this day I cannot see boys playing at marbles without feeling a strong desire to join them.

The Rule of the Shekel

Among playthings my specialty was marbles. I specialized on three lines, blue clays, real agates, the handsomest of all marbles, and big glass center-pieces. I knew well just what I must hold to dominate the market and just how many of the common sort a boy would give for an alley taw, or tor, as we used to pronounce it. Taw is the line or limit from which the players shoot. Others would have returned from the visit to the old time school-house to the hotel. I knew a merchant well, who being delighted with his entertainment in Lucerne did not think it worth while to go out to the leaf-embowered pool to see Thorwaldsen's Lion. Naples has such outstanding beauty that the visitor is ready to "die" and thus omits any visit to Vesuvius, the most famous elevation in the world. But I went from the school-ground to the place, where the soil was once beaten to the hardness of a floor, by the village boys, who, each of them, placed one or two marbles in a ring and in turn shot at them and he who obtained most of them by beating them out of the ring was the winner. We were happy

Here in this trunk were my old club skates which I used to sharpen myself and tie on with strings and leathern thongs, and here was an old ball which, I, having first ravelled the yarn, wound myself and cut the cover out of an old boot top in the good democratic days of town-ball or of "Two-old-cat," when we chose up, for the ins, and did not leave the playing to a few, and half of them from out of town, when a "foul" and "daisy-cutter" were unknown terms. While one dear, sweet, not-to-be-valued-with-the-Gold-of-Ophir object remained among them, it has been hard for me to "put away childish things." Most people are extremely like one's self, and choosing among relics would be supposed to first take one of the sandals of Empedocles, fabled to have been cast forth by Aetna. This father of rhetoric, statesman, prophet, and reformer threw himself into that volcano to disappear and leave no trace and thus establish a belief that he was so beloved of the gods that he was translated. But the volcano would not stand for this imposition and threw out one of his sandals. But I am not interested in such a relic when it is compared with a little token that tells of the deep desire there is in every heart to be remembered.

The Last Wish of Ambitious Minds

We shrink from the fate of being dropped out of sight and out of thought. It strikes a pang to a mother's heart to even hear the adage "out of sight, out of mind." Trading upon her warm feelings, she was solicited to buy, as a birthday gift for her boy, a little china cup, highly colored, inscribed with the words, "remember me." This little token proved to be the best seller on the market. The longer it is kept the greater is the desire to keep it. The child is not asked to prize the gift. The legend upon it tells rather her intensest longing. Her one deepest wish at the moment of final parting could not be better expressed.

The absence of the giver makes the gift more dear. I do not call this idolatry. A German doctor of divinity has expressed the common feeling in an exaggerated form, by saying that he loved God, in his mother and in his wife and children. He saw God-likeness in them and they commended the love of God to him. Certainly next to pleasing God the desire to honor the memory of my father and mother has been my highest incentive in life. One of these motives does not leave off when the other begins. It is a kind of piety which is natural to me. It is spontaneous and seems divinely implanted. Reverence toward Godly people is at least a schooling in piety. I mean of course God's church and God's Book when I speak of my mother's church and my mother's bible. When one is given his old seat in his childhood's home, his mother seems near, and he feels like saying to her,

That great truth which Gray tells us he discovered for himself, and which very few people learn, till they find it by experience, went to my heart, that in this world a human being never can have more than one mother.

It is a peculiar expression that people use when they say that they "keep" Lent, or "keep" Sunday, or "keep" Christmas, or "keep" a birthday. They mean that they observe it, and by thus marking it they get something out of it which is pleasant and suggestive. We all have our little festivals, life's private anniversaries, these jubilees of the heart which we love to celebrate. That day is a high day, when the old homestead becomes an inspiration point. Stores, long ago laid by in the memory, come forth from their hiding places. In unexpected exaltation of spirit, one is lifted above himself.

Strikes a Chord Unconsciously

He gets out of himself and lives for the hour a sort of sublime life. It was worth the trip to obtain such a revelation of my own mind. Of all the works of the Creator's power and wisdom the mind bears most plainly the private mark of the invisible God. Things have almost a miraculous power to visualize persons. This is true to an extent that will not be believed. And here is a perplexity. Shall I insist upon the point? The incredible part is the particular thing I want to emphasize. The trundle bed, the hair-covered trunk, the stairs, the door, the window become active factors, and the faculties awaking out of long heavy slumber become vocal. Faces and tones are at once recalled and intensely vivid remembrances take shape, hue and voice. Spirits of father and mother, are ye here, entering into the high communion of this hour? The suggestiveness of the environment was such that somehow and suddenly, I was a boy again. This is such a day as that in which our parents blessed us, and such a day as that in which our mother fulfilled both of those relations to us. Her love was like spikenard, perfuming the house. Two good friends I there summoned to go with me, memory and resolution. One of these friends reinforces the work of the other. When I vividly remember, I want to make a consecration. I want to do some sacrificial act, and to do it distinctively for mother's sake. Now, henceforth, "No day without something learned: no day without something done." I took some live coals off the home altar to start new fires. Our ancestors had, what they styled "living" money and "dead" money. In emergencies they sought to convert dead resources into currency. My legacy is a memory and the old battered trunk which was a little world in itself.

Old Home Looks Young Again

In the days of my top and kite-hood, the trunk had constantly to be opened because something had been forgotten. How small a thing it was to contain as much as I thought there was in it. I showed my regard for it by the things I entrusted to it. The germ of every home I ever had was in it. Its contents I have almost idolized. I speak advisedly, I would rather lose the house than what, reserved from it, has come down with me through the years, taken with their setting. A boy likes a place to keep his things. A boy accumulates. That's his nature. An associate has just said that his first memory was a suit that had pockets. There is something in a boy's constitution that gives him a large use for pockets. To empty them is not a convenience, merely, but a necessity, as in his use of them they project like two bay-windows. His nature necessitates a trunk. There must be a secret spot around which can rally the sentiments that a home awakens and conserves. A mother loves to get a Bible into this trunk, which is to be the center-point to his heart and home. Mother's sentiment was well chosen. This book will keep you from sin and sin will keep you from this book. They do not go together. They do not keep company. This Bible had about it what it calls "a sweet smelling savor." A new pocket book, a gift from my grandfather, was also quite redolent but the odor of these was different.

The Odor of Apple Blossoms

I read in an old legend that a Damascus Blade gave forth both sparks and perfume. My sense of smell was always exceedingly acute. It has guarded me often against exposure. I can instantly detect invisible forms of peril. I knew a way to find out about those qualities of a Damascus Blade. A boy is always ready to educate himself by the use of his sense perceptions, and is particularly prompt with taste and smell. I had from the first a rare, refreshing pleasure from flowers, perfumes, aromatic materials producing a sweet odor when burned and the smell of fruits. I used to love the fragrance of new hay and of the freshly plowed ground and of the earth when moistened by a quick summer shower, the scented fumes wafted from the land when approached from the ocean, and the fishy smell of the shore when you have reached it. The odor of a well-kept light harness when well warmed up on a fine gaited horse, and the odor of the varnish on the carriage, I, to this hour, remember from my boyhood days. I loved the intensity of odors so peculiar, so unlike those of summer, that we used to notice after the frost had fallen, when the winter was at hand, and the aroma of the woods having been first imprisoned, was exhaled by a warm sun, in a cloud of incense. All the sense perceptions were wide open to the mind. We were constantly learning. Life was a school without recesses or vacations and had a full corps of instructors in all the departments.

"Speak to the earth and it shall teach thee." "There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification."