[13]

My parents were respected residents of a small village in the western part of the State of New York. I had been away at a boys' academy for three years, and returned about the first of June to my parents and to Babbletown to find that I was considered a young man, and expected to take my part in the business and pleasures of life as such. My father dismissed his clerk and put me in his place behind the counter of our store.

Within three days every girl in that village had been to that store after something or another—pins, needles, a yard of tape, to look at gloves, to try on shoes, or examine gingham and calico, until I was happy, because out of sight, behind a pile high enough to hide my flushed countenance. I shall never forget that week. I ran the gauntlet from morning till night. I believe those heartless wretches told each other the mistakes I made, for they kept coming and coming, looking as sweet as honey and as sly as foxes. Father said I'd break him if I didn't stop making blunders in giving change—he wasn't in the prize-candy business, and couldn't afford to have me give twenty-five sheets of note paper, a box of pens, six corset laces, a bunch of whalebones, and two dollars and fifty cents change for a two-dollar bill.[14]

[14]

He explained to me that the safety-pins which I had offered Emma Jones for crochet-needles were not crochet-needles; nor the red wafers I had shown Mary Smith for gum-drops, gum-drops—that gingham was not three dollars per yard, nor pale-blue silk twelve-and-a-half cents, even to Squire Marigold's daughter. He said I must be more careful.

"I don't think the mercantile business is my forte, father," said I.

"Your fort!" replied the old gentleman; "fiddlesticks! We have nothing to do with military matters. But if you think you have a special call to anything, John, speak out. Would you like to study for the ministry, my son?"

"Oh, no, indeed! I don't know exactly what I would like, unless it were to be a Juan Fernandez, or a—a light-house keeper."

Then father said I was a disgrace to him, and I knew I was.

On the fourth day some young fellows came to see me, and told me there was to be a picnic on Saturday, and I must get father's horse and buggy and take one of the girls. In vain I pleaded that I did not know any of them well enough. They laughed at me, and said that Belle Marigold had 

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