On other afternoons I went to walk with a playmate, who, like myself, was full of romantic dreams, along the banks of the Merrimack River, where the Indians had still their tents, or on Sundays, to see the “new converts” baptized. These baptizings in the river were very common, as the tanks in the churches were not considered _apostolic_ by the early Baptists of Lowell. Sometimes we rambled by the “race-way” or mill-race, which carried the water into the flume of the mill, along whose inclining sides grew wild roses, and the “rock-loving columbine;” and we used to listen to see if we could hear the blue-bells ring,--this was long before either of us had read a line of poetry. The North Grammar school building stood at the base of a hilly ridge of rocks, down which we coasted in winter, and where in summer, after school-hours, we had a little cave, where we sometimes hid, and played that we were robbers; and together we rehearsed the dramatic scenes in “Alonzo and Melissa,” “The Children of the Abbey,” or the “Three Spaniards;” we were turned out of doors with Amanda, we exclaimed “Heavens!” with Melissa, and when night came on we fled from our play-house pursued by the dreadful apparition of old Don Padilla through the dark windings of those old rocks, towards our commonplace home. “Ah!” as some writer has said, “if one could only add the fine imagination of those early days to the knowledge and experience of later years, what books might not be written!” Our home amusements were very original. We had no toys, except a few homemade articles or devices of our own. I had but a single doll, a wooden-jointed thing, with red cheeks and staring black eyes. Playing-cards were tabooed, but my elder brother (the incipient D.D.), who had somehow learned the game of high-low-jack, set about making a pack. The cards were cut out of thick yellow pasteboard, the spots and figures were made in ink, and, to disguise their real character, the names of the suits were changed. Instead of hearts, diamonds, spades, and clubs, they were called charity, love, benevolence, and faith. The pasteboard was so thick that all together the cards made a pile at least two or three feet high, and they had to be shuffled in sections! He taught my second brother and me the game of high-low-jack; and, with delightful secrecy, as often as we could steal away, we played in the attic, keeping the cards hidden, between whiles, in an old hair trunk. In playing the game we got along very well with the names of the face-cards,--the “queen of charity,” the “king of love,” and so on; but the “ten-spot of faith,” and particularly the “two-spot of benevolence” (we had never heard of the “deuce”) was too much for our sense of humor, and almost spoiled the “rigor of the game.”