It is strange, but somehow I have no such distinct recollection of our home as I have of the other objects that were familiar to my childish mind. I can see the little muddy brook that ran just back of the garden fence. Down the hill on the edge of the stream stood a log cheese-house,—at least, it seems so now,—and back of this cheese-house beside the brook must have been a favorite spot for me to wade and fish, although I have no remembrance that I ever caught anything, which fact I am happy to record. Beyond the stream was an orchard. I am uncertain whether or not it belonged to my father, although I rather think it must have been owned by somebody else, the apples always looked so tempting and so red,—which reminds me that all through life it has seemed to me that no fruit was quite so sweet as that which was just beyond my reach. Anyhow, this orchard stands out very plainly in my mind. It was a very large orchard,—in fact, a great forest of trees; and I remember that I always stole over the fence intending to get the apples on the nearest tree, but they did not taste so sweet nor look so red as some others farther on, which in turn were passed by for others yet a little farther off, until I had gone quite through the orchard in my endeavor to get the very best. Although I have been grown up for many a year, somehow this habit of seeing something better further on has clung to me through life. So tenacious is this habit, that I fancy I have missed much that is valuable and good in my eager haste to get something better still. I am not quite certain about the orchard, perhaps it was not so very large after all; at least, when I went back a few years ago there was no cheese-house, and no orchard, and even the brook was grown up to grass and weeds. I know that in my childhood my parents moved from the old house to another slightly better, and nearer town; but though I can clearly remember certain incidents of both, still I have no recollection of our moving, and it is utterly impossible to keep the impressions of each separate and distinct.