distinguish my right hand from my left was by seating myself in imagination beside grandfather at table where I was when I first learned which was which,—left toward him, right toward cellar door. And, being so seated, I recall another lesson,—vinegar should not be called beginniger.
It was in the south yard that we built the big snow-man; it was there that the sleigh upset when we turned in from the street with too much of a flourish, and pitched Nan and me deep into a snow bank; it was here under the apple trees that we turned somersaults; it was here that the horse stood on his hind legs to shake down his favorite apples from the tree. The same horse would come to the stone door-step by the kitchen and rattle the bucket there when he was thirsty; that was the doorstep where I placed my feet when papa made my little shoes shine like his boots; and here Elizabeth was packed in grandfather Weston’s old clock-case for her long ride to California,—as if she were going in a coffin to heaven. But the San Justo heaven lacked the great beds of lilies-of-the-valley, such as grew under the trees in the Maine yard.
These impressions were planted deep in my mind during the months I spent in the beautiful village, with its dignified white houses, its tall trees, its great river. But, once again on my westward way, they slipped back into the files of memory, displaced by the renewal of other old impressions, for I was making my fourth trans-continental trip, my fourth stop in Chicago with my mother’s brother, Josiah Hathaway.
