shelter. Behind the house was a separate building, long and low, in which
all the cooking was done, and upstairs were the rooms where the slaves
dwelt apart.

The great garden stretched westward as far as Third street, and was full of
fine fruit-trees, and in the autumn of melons, first brought hither in one
of my father's ships. Herbs and simples were not wanting, nor berries, for
all good housewives in those days were expected to be able to treat colds
and the lesser maladies with simples, as they were called, and to provide
abundantly jams and conserves of divers kinds.

There were many flowers too, and my mother loved to make a home here for
the wildings she found in the governor's woods. I have heard her regret
that the most delicious of all the growths of spring, the ground-sweet,
which I think they now call arbutus, would not prosper out of its forest
shelter.

The house was of black and red brick, and double; that is, with two windows
on each side of a white Doric doorway, having something portly about it. I
use the word as Dr. Johnson defines it: a house of port, with a look of
sufficiency, and, too, of ready hospitality, which was due, I think, to the
upper half of the door being open a good part of the year. I recall also
the bull's-eye of thick glass in the upper half-door, and below it a great
brass knocker. In the white shutters were cut crescentic openings, which
looked at night like half-shut eyes when there were lights within the
rooms. In the hall were hung on pegs leathern buckets. They were painted
green, and bore, in yellow letters, "Fire" and "J.W."

The day I went to school for the first time is very clear in my memory. I
can see myself, a stout little fellow about eight years old, clad in gray