as I had when a boy, to get him a pair of tongs.

The first piece of household furniture I ever purchased was a pair of
old tongs. I was a lad in my teens. "Five--five--five--five--v-v-v-ve
_will_ you make it ten?" I heard the auctioneer cry as I passed the
front gate. He held a pair of brass-headed hearth tongs above his
head, waving them wildly at the unresponsive bidders.

"Will _you_ make it ten?" he yelled at me as the last comer.

"Ten," I answered, a need for fire tongs, that blistering July day,
suddenly overcoming me.

"And sold for ten cents to the boy in the gate," shouted the
auctioneer. "Will somebody throw in the fireplace to go with them!"

I took my tongs rather sheepishly, I fear, rather helplessly, and got
back through the gate, for I was on foot and several miles from home.
I trudged on for home carrying those tongs with me all the way, not
knowing why, not wishing to throw them into the briers for they were
very old and full of story, and I--was very young and full of--I cannot
tell, remembering what little _boys_ are made of. And now here they
lean against the hearth, that very pair. I packed them in the bottom
of my trunk when I started for college; I saved them through the years
when our open fire was a "base-burner," and then a gas-radiator in a
city flat. Moved, preserved, "married" these many years, they stand at
last where the boy must have dreamed them standing--that hot July day,
how long, long ago!

But why should a boy have dreamed such dreams? And what was it in a