In Boston it seemed as if every waking hour of my father’s and mother’s existence was filled with labor for city, state, or nation. At Portsmouth the pressure was somewhat relaxed. I remember both parents as steadily at work here during the morning, but there were delicious afternoons when they were free to play with us. Those were the palmy days of the Newport catboats, small, steady, centerboard sloops, the best craft for pleasure sailing I have known. Memories arise of delightful summer days when a gay party of us drove to town in the old carryall, which was “put up” in the shed of the Newport Reading Room, of which my father was one of the founders. At Bannister’s wharf, if we were lucky, we engaged Cap’n Anthony and his boat, _The Two Sisters_, for the day. The ecstasy of the motion of that little cockleshell as she danced over the water is something unforgettable. If the wind were light, we steered our way out of the harbor towards Beaver Tail for a taste of the ocean; if there was too much sea on, the course lay within the landlocked waters of the bay. At high noon we landed at Conanicut Island just below old Fort Dumpling. Conanicut now goes mostly by the more prosaic name of Jamestown. Sometimes, when a householder of this pleasant summer resort drives me about the island, pointing out this or that view, a miracle happens! Some wind of memory blows Jamestown, with its hotels, its nice comfortable houses, clean away, and gives me back the bare rocky Conanicut of my youth that I loved as I can never love Jamestown. The commodious ferry boat from which I have just stepped disappears, I am sitting once more at the masthead of _The Two Sisters_, flying over Narragansett Bay, the salt taste on my lips, the salt wind in my hair. I am climbing the steep rough path to the old ruined fort, a lunch basket in one hand, a camp stool in the other. On the farther side of the Island is a little sheltered silver stretch of beach where one day, when the party is small and intimate, we make out to rig a shelter to shield us in our undressing and to slip into the delicious cool water. The joy of such a stolen sea bath, where there is no curious crowd to watch, can hardly be known to the ladies and gentlemen who now disport themselves on summer mornings at Bailey’s Beach.