One
afternoon the small boy was given a toy organ by a sympathetic friend.
Next morning early I was waked to find the small boy very vivacious
and requesting a story. Having drowsily told the story, I said, "Now,
father's told you a story, so you amuse yourself and let father go to
sleep"; to which the small boy responded most virtuously, "Yes, father
will go to sleep and I'll play the organ," which he did, at a distance
of two feet from my head. Later his sister, who had just come down with
the measles, was put into the same room. The small boy was convalescing,
and was engaged in playing on the floor with some tin ships, together
with two or three pasteboard monitors and rams of my own manufacture. He
was giving a vivid rendering of Farragut at Mobile Bay, from memories
of how I had told the story. My pasteboard rams and monitors were
fascinating--if a naval architect may be allowed to praise his own
work--and as property they were equally divided between the little girl
and the small boy. The little girl looked on with alert suspicion from
the bed, for she was not yet convalescent enough to be allowed down on
the floor. The small boy was busily reciting the phases of the fight,
which now approached its climax, and the little girl evidently suspected
that her monitor was destined to play the part of victim.
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