In the same way, our walks, when not directed toward certain localities for rare flowers or birds or insects,--as to Mount Auburn sands, now included in the cemetery of that name, or the extensive jungle north of Fresh Pond, where the herons of Longfellow's poem had their nests,--were more or less guided by historic objects. There was the picturesque old Revolutionary Powder Mill in what is now Somerville, or the remains of redoubts on Winter Hill, where we used to lie along the grassy slopes and repel many British onslaughts. Often we went to the fascinating wharves of Boston, then twice as long as now, and full of sea-smells and crossed yards and earringed sailors. A neighbor's boy had the distinction of being bad enough to be actually sent to sea for a dubious reformation; and though, when he came back, I was forbidden to play with him, on the ground that he not only swore, but carried an alleged pistol, yet it was something to live on the same street with one so marked out from the list of common boys, and to watch him from afar exhibiting to youths of laxer training what seemed to be the
