350 SKETCHES IN PROSE. 



girls, who received them with the conventional giggle. I 

 don't think the confectionery of the present age is equal to the 

 old-time article on the score of purity; there is so much more 

 chalk in its composition now. Among the eccentricities of 

 my childhood was a partiality for candy. When my parents 

 went to store my last request was for mint stick ; my first 

 inquiry after they returned was if they had got it. In vain 

 was the sanitary advice about its being unwholesome for 

 children ; vanity of vanities was it to try to curb the appe- 

 tite for it by the solemn assurance that it would rot out every 

 tooth in my head. That row of jars brings to my recol- 

 lection a singular conceit that took possession of my callow 

 mind during the Millerite excitement. Several of my school- 

 fellows, whose parents were firm believers in Millerism, had 

 impressed my mental faculties with the idea that the end of 

 the world was nigh, and that on a certain fixed day the human 

 race was to be extinct on earth. The speculation as to what 

 manner of means was to accomplish this filled my young 

 mind with terror, but I at last gathered consolation from the 

 possibility that one person might be left as a sample of what 

 w^as, and furthermore, that that person might be me. My 

 impression was that the earth would remain as it was, onl}^ 

 uninhabited ; the houses stand as they were, only tenantless ; 

 the stores — they were the prominent features — without store- 

 keepers ; and then, with no one to say nay, I would go for the 

 confectioner}^ ! No thoughts of my loneliness, or the fearful 

 silence which would prevail over the land in the suppression 

 of all animated nature, with my single exception, entered into 

 my philosophy. Neither did I draw comparisons between my 

 possible condition and the similar one of Macaulay's New 

 Zealander in depopulated London. The simple possibility of 

 a free range of the candy shelves of a deserted store absorbed 

 all other considerations. 



On my right, as I enter, is the counter devoted to groceries 



