I was afraid of ships. Why, I could never tell. The masts looked frightfully tall,--but they were not so tall as the steeple of our old yellow meeting-house. At any rate I used to hide my eyes from the sloops and schooners that were wont to lie at the end of the bridge, and I confess that traces of this undefined terror lasted very long.--One other source of alarm had a still more fearful significance. There was a great wooden HAND,--a glove-maker's sign, which used to swing and creak in the blast, as it hung from a pillar before a certain shop a mile or two outside of the city. Oh, the dreadful hand! Always hanging there ready to catch up a little boy, who would come home to supper no more, nor yet to bed, --whose porringer would be laid away empty thenceforth, and his half-worn shoes wait until his small brother grew to fit them. As for all manner of superstitious observances, I used once to think I must have been peculiar in having such a list of them, but I now believe that half the children of the same age go through the same experiences. No Roman soothsayer ever had such a catalogue of OMENS as I found in the Sibylline leaves of my childhood. That trick of throwing a stone at a tree and attaching some mighty issue to hitting or missing, which you will find mentioned in one or more biographies, I well remember. Stepping on or over certain particular things or spots--Dr. Johnson's especial weakness I got the habit of at a very early age.--I won't swear that I have not some tendency to these not wise practices even at this present date. [How many of you that read these notes can say the same thing!] With these follies mingled sweet delusions, which I loved so well I would not outgrow them, even when it required a voluntary effort to put a momentary trust in them. Here is one which I cannot help telling you.