Souvenirs 
sister Susannah Blackburn; from her it passed 
to her son, the John Smith of this book; and in 
his keeping it had for years been a treasure— 
lying about, I understood, in window-sills, nor 
yet put away—perhaps because of a singular 
suggestiveness it has; a singular power to draw 
pleasant associations clustering round it. 
At least this is what I myself experienced. 
Although the little volume was but too often 
something else to move where there was already 
too much, for weeks I could not bring myself to 
clear it off my table. Every time my sight 
happened upon it some agreeable fancy or other 
seemed to be stirred. Now I remembered the 
farm-house window it had lain in, and began 
fancying old-time haymakings or harvests. Now 
the black-brown oak-grain took my thoughts 
dreaming away to leafy forests two hundred years 
ago or so, and to sawyers and timber-carting : 
now sailor-men and the ‘‘ wooden walls of old 
England”’ seemed to be recalled there. <A 
curious thing was that thoughts of my uncle 
himself were not often wakened up in this way. 
The souvenir took me one or two generations 
farther back. The fancies it kindled epitomised 
so much of England’s strong life that memories 
of John Smith himself seemed almost crowded 
out. 
But it may be surmised that the effect was 
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