“I remember when I was thirteen, our cousin said she’d give us a Christmas tree. So we went down into Patrick’s swamp—I suppose the names are all changed now—and dug up a little 198 pine tree, about as tall as we were, and planted it in a tub. On the night of Christmas Day, just when we were dancing around the tree, making merry and having a high-old-jinks of a time, the way children will, grandma came in and looked at us. ‘Will this popery never cease?’ was all she said, and out she flounced.”
“Yes, that was the old Puritan idea of it. But did live——”
“Now hold on,” he interrupted. “I want to finish. We planted that tree near the corner of Sunset Avenue and Amity Street, and it’s there now, a magnificent tree. Sometime when I’m East I’m going to go up there with my brother and put a tablet on it—‘Pause, busy traveller, and give a thought to the happy days of two Western boys who lived in old New England, and make resolve to render the boyhood near you happier and brighter,’ or something like that.”
“That’s a pretty idea,” Garland agreed. He felt something fine and tender in the man’s voice which was generally hard and dry but wonderfully expressive.
THE HALL.
“Now, this sermon I had bound just for the sake of old times. If I didn’t have it right here, I wouldn’t believe I ever wrote such stuff. I tell you, a boy’s a queer combination,” he ended, referring to the book again.
“You’ll see that I signed my name, those days, ‘E. P. Field.’ The ‘P.’ stands for Phillips.
“As I grew old enough to realize it, I was much chagrined to find I had no middle name like the rest of the boys, so I took the name of Phillips. I was a great admirer of Wendell Phillips, am yet, though I’m not a reformer. You’ll see here,”—he pointed at the top of the pages,—“I wrote the word ‘sensual.’ Evidently I was struck with the word, and was seeking a chance to ring it in somewhere, but failed.” They both laughed over the matter while Field put the book back.