Among my earliest impressions is one of a hill in our back yard, and of our going down it to bring water from the well. I am sure that the hill is not a dream, for I have been back since and found it there, although not near as long and steep as it seemed in those far-off years. I remember that we children used to slide down this hill and then walk up again. Even then I was willing to do a great deal of work for a very small amount of fun. Somehow, in looking back, it seems as if I were always sliding downhill and tugging my sled back to the top in the dusk of the evening. I cannot quite understand how it is that I remember the evening best, but there it is as I unroll the scroll,—there are the dents in my memory, and there is the little boy pulling his sled uphill and looking in at the lighted kitchen window at the top. There, too, are the older and wiser members of the family,—those who have learned that the short sensation of sliding down the hill is not worth the long tug up; a lesson which, although I am growing old and gray, I never have been wise enough to learn. There are the older ones gathered around the table with their books, or busy with their household work,—the old family circle that I see so plainly now in the lamplight through the window, perhaps more plainly for the years that lie between. This magic circle was long since broken and scattered, and lives only in the memory of the man-child who knew so little then of what life really meant, and who knows so little now.