THE HARBOR

BOOK I

CHAPTER I


"You chump," I thought contemptuously. I was seven years old at the
time, and the gentleman to whom I referred was Henry Ward Beecher. What
it was that aroused my contempt for the man will be more fully
understood if I tell first of the grudge that I bore him.

I was sitting in my mother's pew in the old church in Brooklyn. I was
altogether too small for the pew, it was much too wide for the bend at
my knees; and my legs, which were very short and fat, stuck straight out
before me. I...