Red-legged storks built their nests on the tiled roofs of the quaint old houses, and swallows reared their young under the broad eaves, protected like their loftier neighbors by the general good-will of the people, and by the superstition that assigned sure misfortune, even if nothing worse than a plague of boils, to whomsoever should lay profane hand upon them. In the silent halls of the old cloister, where the echo of sandalled feet on stone floors seemed always to linger,--steps of good friars long since dust in forgotten graves,--they flew in and out, and though they built two nests for one, since they were given to raising two broods in the brief summer, they did not wear their welcome out. The turnkey patiently put up an extra shelf, for, old as was he, were not the swallows tenants before him? Ponderous whale-oil lamps swung across the streets in rusty chains that squeaked in every vagrant breeze a dismal accompaniment to the cry of the night watch. In such a setting tinderboxes and quill pens seemed quite the thing. I well remember the distrustful resentment in which old teachers held the “English” (steel) pens. They still clung to the goose-quill, which no one to-day would know how to cut. But the word “penknife” had meaning in those days. Envelopes were a still later discovery. Letters were folded and sealed with wax, and we boys collected seals as the boys of to-day collect stamps; and a good deal more of variety and human interest there was in the collection. I mind the excitement when the first bottle of “Pennsylvania oil” came into our house. I fetched it myself from the grocer’s, bottled like beer at eight skilling a bottle. Very likely they were Lübeck skilling, reminiscent of the middle ages when the Hanse Towns so thoroughly monopolized all trade in the North that their very coinage endured centuries after their League had ceased to be. Other things lasted. Their factors in foreign lands were bachelors, whether from choice or compulsion I do not know, and to this day the Danish word for bachelor is “Pebersvend,” _i.e._ pepper clerk, spices being a chief ware in their shops. As for the telegraph, people shook their heads at it as a more than dubious American notion, though the undoubted success of the first sewing-machine that had come to town had disposed them to lend a lenient ear to its claims.