LANDMARKS AND PERSONALITIES

next thing I remember — it must have been half to three quarters  of an hour later — the fire engines came up our driveway,      turned around and went home again. What was the reason for      all this? Little George Washington told his father everything and  was warned that if it ever happened again Ross Parker, the fire chief, and Pat McAuliffe, the police chief, would come up and   give me a sound spanking.

   On the ground floor of the old town hall there were several offices and a small auditorium for special meetings, and it was    here that the Catholic Church held its weekly masses. Once my mother was helping set up a booth for a fair in the upper hall       and a screen was needed to hide some props. She looked around the lower reaches of the building and finally found something       she thought would do and carried it upstairs.
   "Put that back quick," said one of the committee members, horrified, "that's the confessional screen."
   It looked like any other screen except that it had a hole in it.  This, of course, stimulated my childish imagination and a few     days later I told one of our maids that I had been very bad. "I   think I ought to confess my sins," I added. She agreed it would    be a good idea.
   "Do you ever confess yours?" I asked, and she said that she    did.
   "When I do it," I continued brashly, "we have a screen with         a hole in it and Mr. Perkins [the Unitarian minister] sits on one   side and I sit on the other. Is that how you do it?"
   She said that it was.
   "And then I tell him all the bad things I've done and he tells

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