It was a great advantage for-outdoor training that my school was a mile off, and I paced the distance to and fro, twice a day, through what was then a rural region interspersed with a few large houses of historical associations. The great colonial residences on Tory Row, of which Craigie House was only one, always impressed the imagination. Sometimes I had companions, -my elder brother for a time, and his classmates, Lowell and Story. I remember treading along close behind them once, as they discussed Spenser's “Faerie Queene,” which they had been reading, and which led us younger boys to christen a favorite play-place “the Bower of Blisse.” Story was then a conspicuously handsome boy, with a rather high-bred look, and overflowing with fun and frolic, as indeed he was during his whole life. Lowell was at that time of much more ordinary appearance, short and freckled, and a secondary figure beside Story; yet in later life, with his fine eyes and Apollo-like brow, he became much the more noticeable of the two, as he was certainly far superior in genius.
Oftener I went alone. Sometimes I made
