Sometimes I would go along so as to take the smaller children. Once
a schooner was wrecked on a point half a dozen miles away. She
held together well for a season or two after having been cleared of
everything down to the timbers, and this gave us the chance to make
camping-out trips in which the girls could also be included, for we put
them to sleep in the wreck, while the boys slept on the shore; squaw
picnics, the children called them.
My children, when young, went to the public school near us, the little
Cove School, as it is called. For nearly thirty years we have given
the Christmas tree to the school. Before the gifts are distributed I am
expected to make an address, which is always mercifully short, my own
children having impressed upon me with frank sincerity the attitude of
other children to addresses of this kind on such occasions. There are of
course performances by the children themselves, while all of us parents
look admiringly on, each sympathizing with his or her particular
offspring in the somewhat wooden recital of "Darius Green and his Flying
Machine" or "The Mountain and the Squirrel had a Quarrel." But the tree
and the gifts make up for all shortcomings.
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