It is only by imagination, through the hard experience life has brought, that I know these familiar things had a different meaning to the old miller and to me. Yet even now I am not sure that they had for him a deeper or more vital sense. Perhaps the water for my swimming-hole was as important as the water for his bread. For after all both were needed, in their several ways, to make more tolerable the ever illusive game of life. But I must describe Farmington and its people as they seemed to me,—as in fact they were to me, according to their utility in the small schemes of a little child. The world seems to take for granted that every parent is a hero to his children, and that they look to the father and mother as to almost superhuman beings whose power they cannot understand but can rely upon with implicit faith. Even the street-car signs tell this old tale, and advertise “pies like mother used to make.” No doubt the infant looks with perfect confidence into the eyes of the mother who gave it birth, and in its tender years the child has the utmost trust in the wisdom and protection of the parent to whom it has always looked to satisfy its needs. But I cannot remember that in my youth either I, or any of my companions, had the feeling and regard for our parents that is commonly assumed. In fact, we believed that, as to wisdom and general ability to cope with the affairs of life, we were superior to them; and we early came to see their shortcomings rather than their strength. I cannot say that I looked upon my mother even as a cook exactly in the light of the street-car advertisements, but I distinctly recall that often when I visited the woodsheds of neighboring children and was kindly given a piece of pie or cake, I went back home and told my mother how much better this pie tasted than the kind she baked, and asked her why she did not make pies and cakes the way the neighbors did; but to all these suggestions I ever got the same reply,—if I did not like her cooking I could go elsewhere to board. Of course this put a stop to all discussion. I am quite certain that it is only after long years of absence, when we look back upon our childhood homes, the bread and pies are mixed with a tender sentiment that makes us imagine they were better than in fact they really were. I rather fancy that if our mother’s cooking were set before us once again, we should need the strong primitive appetite of our youth to make it taste as our imagination tells us that it did.