A BRACE OF BOYS
up had resulted in weak lungs, poor digestion, sluggish circulation, and torpid liver. Moreover, he was troubled with the painfulest bashfulness which ever made a mother think her child too ethereal, or a dispassionate outsider regard him as too flimsy, for this world. These were weights enough to carry, even if he had not labored under that heaviest of all, a well-stored mind.
No misnomer that last to any one who has ever frequented the Atlantic Docks, or seen storage in any large port of entry. How does a storehouse look? It’s a vast, dark, cold chamber—dust an inch deep on the floor, cobwebs festooning the girders — and piled from floor to ceiling on the principle of getting the largest bulk into the least room, with barrels, boxes, bales, baskets, chests, crates, and carboys—merchandise of all description, from the rough, raw material to the most exquisite choses de luxe. The inmost layers are inextricable without pulling down the outer ones. If you want a particular case of broadcloth you must clear yourself an alleyway through a hundred tierces of hams, and last week’s entry of clayed sugars is inaccessible without tumbling on your head a mountain of Yankee notions.
In my nephew’s unfortunate youth such storage as this had minds. As long as the crown of his brain’s arch was not crushed in by some intellectual Furman Street diaster, those steve-
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