With me it was the growing
time, that idle summer by the sea, and I grew all the faster because I
had been so cramped before. My mind, too, had so recently been worked
upon by the impressive experience of a change of country that I was more
than commonly alive to impressions, which are the seeds of ideas.
Let no one suppose that I spent my time entirely, or even chiefly, in
inspired solitude. By far the best part of my day was spent in
play--frank, hearty, boisterous play, such as comes natural to American
children. In Polotzk I had already begun to be considered too old for
play, excepting set games or organized frolics. Here I found myself
included with children who still played, and I willingly returned to
childhood. There were plenty of playfellows. My father's energetic
little partner had a little wife and a large family. He kept them in the
little cottage next to ours; and that the shanty survived the tumultuous
presence of that brood is a wonder to me to-day. The young Wilners
included an assortment of boys, girls, and twins, of every possible
variety of age, size, disposition, and sex. They swarmed in and out of
the cottage all day long, wearing the door-sill hollow, and trampling
the ground to powder. They swung out of windows like monkeys, slid up
the roof like flies, and shot out of trees like fowls. Even a small
person like me couldn't go anywhere without being run over by a Wilner;
and I could never tell which Wilner it was because none of them ever
stood still long enough to be identified; and also because I suspected
that they were in the habit of interchanging conspicuous articles of
clothing, which was very confusing.
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