But I have gone far afield from the household economics of the Old Town. They were intended to make both ends meet on a scale of small incomes with need, often enough, of the closest figuring. Large families were the rule rather than the exception. Not till my father was long in his grave and I was looking over his old papers and accounts, did I suspect how bitter was the fight he waged those forty years and to what straits he was put. To turn a coat when the right side was worn threadbare was a common expedient in those days of honest cloth, but Father had his overcoat turned twice to tide him over an evil time. As for us boys, we didn’t have any half the time. I remember the winter when, being in such case and making a virtue of bald necessity, I tried to organize a Spartan Society among my schoolmates, the corner-stone of which was contempt of overcoats as plain mollycoddling. As a means of attracting the boys there were secret passwords and an initiation that had to be worked at dusk in the moat by the Castle Hill and was supposed to be very grewsome. It took for a while, until the mothers put a stop to it. I believe one of them who had read Æsop’s fable about the fox that had lost its tail and tried to persuade the other foxes that it was the latest fashion, saw through my dodge. At any rate the long woollen muffler which the society allowed, I being possessed of one, went out of vogue and the overcoats came back. It must have been at that time that my father bought at a salvage sale of the cargo of a wrecked ship a roll of really fine cloth of a peculiar sea-green color. It was a good investment, for it made not only a suit for Father that had lots of wear in it, but all the family were clad in green while it lasted, which was a long while. I hate to think what the boys of to-day would have nicknamed us. They were not so bright then, and I doubt if we would have cared. We boys were quite able to defend the family honor, and quite ready too. Father had a fancy for numbering his children in Latin. The sixth was called Sextus, the ninth Nonus. In grim jest, he proposed to name the twelfth Duodecimus, but agreed with his fellow-teachers that the luckless child would be forever miscalled “dozen.” They had a good laugh over it. Father was very far from being a book-worm. Though he was very learned, he had a keen sense of humor, and, for all the heavy burdens he carried, he was the life of the company always.