142 CAPTAIN ZACHARY G. LAMSON 



deferred, was the great ship-owner and 

 merchant. He had dared the perils of com- 

 merce and won, he was the model on which 

 the young men hoped to shape theniselves. 

 As the boy went to school he could see the 

 great square house of the merchant prince, 

 three stories high, painted white, set flush 

 to the street, beautiful in its simplicity, 

 with its formal garden bordered with box 

 and crowded with roses, pinks, peonies and 

 phlox and in some retired corner a little 

 patch of sweet herbs. Back of the house 

 stood the barn and to one side and back of 

 that stood the orchard, and few of the boys 

 of the village but had tasted of its fruit 

 legitimately or otherwise. Once or twice, 

 too, the boy had been in the great house and 

 had wondered at the massive sideboard 

 covered with china and silver, at the great 

 punch bowl on the dresser, the quaint Dutch 

 tiles about the fireplace, at lacquered 

 cabinet and carved chest of drawers. But 

 what pleased him most of all were the 

 exquisitely carved chessmen, too fragile 



