VALENTINE'S MANUAL

The next thing I remember is going with my nurse to
the Vauxhall Gardens, and riding in a merry-go-round.
These Gardens were in Lafayette Place, near our house,
and there was a gate on the Lafayette Place side, and
another on the Bowery side.

Back of our house was an alley that ran through to
the Bowery, and there was a livery stable on the Bowery,
and one time my brother, who was full of fun and mis¬
chief, got a pony from the stable and rode it right down
into our kitchen and galloped it around the table and
frightened our cook almost to death.

Another time he jumped onto a new barrel of flour and
went right in, boots and all. He was so mischievous that
our nurse kept a suit of his old clothes done up in a
bundle, and threatened to put them on him and give him
to the old-clothes man when he came along.

The beggar girls bother us dreadfully. They come
down the steps to the kitchen door and ring the bell and
ask for cold victuals; and sometimes they peek through
the window into the basefnent, which is my nursery. And
one day my brother said to one of them, "My dear, I am
very sorry, but our victuals are all hot now, but if you
will call in about an hour they will be cold." And she
went away awfully angry.

We moved from Lafayette Place to Brooklyn when I
was four years old, but only lived there one year. My
brother liked Brooklyn because he could go crabbing on
the river, but I was afraid of the goats, which chased
one of my friends one day. So we came back to New
York, and my father bought a house in Ninth Street.
He bought it of a gentleman who lived next door to us,
and who had but one lung, and he lived on raw turnips

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