University of Virginia Library

Spring;
Or
Dreams of Boyhood.

Spring.

THE old chroniclers made the year begin in the
season of frosts; and they have launched us
upon the current of the months, from the snowy banks
of January. I love better to count time, from spring
to spring; it seems to me far more cheerful, to reckon
the year by blossoms, than by blight.

Bernardin de St. Pierre, in his sweet story of Virginia,
makes the bloom of the cocoa-tree, or the growth
of the banana, a yearly and a loved monitor of the
passage of her life. How cold and cheerless in the
comparison, would be the icy chronology of the North;
—So many years have I seen the lakes locked,
and the foliage die!

The budding and blooming of spring, seem to belong
properly to the opening of the months. It is the
season of the quickest expansion, of the warmest blood,
of the readiest growth; it is the boy-age of the year.
The birds sing in chorus in the spring—just as children
prattle; the brooks run full—like the overflow of
young hearts; the showers drop easily—as young tears
flow; and the whole sky is as capricious as the mind
of a boy.

Between tears and smiles, the year, like the child,
struggles into the warmth of life. The old year,—say
what the chronologists will,—lingers upon the very lap
of spring; and is only fairly gone, when the blossoms
of April have strewn their pall of glory upon his tomb,
and the blue-birds have chanted his requiem.

It always seems to me as if an access of life came
with the melting of the winter's snows; and as if every
rootlet of grass that lifted its first green blade from the
matted debris of the old year's decay, bore my spirit
upon it, nearer to the largess of Heaven.

I love to trace the break of spring step by step: I
love even those long rain-storms that sap the icy fortresses
of the lingering winter,—that melt the snows
upon the hills, and swell the mountain-brooks;—that
make the pools heave up their glassy cerements of
ice, and hurry down the crashing fragments into the
wastes of ocean.

I love the gentle thaws that you can trace, day by
day, by the stained snow-banks, shrinking from the
grass; and by the gentle drip of the cottage-eaves. I
love to search out the sunny slopes by a southern wall,
where the reflected sun does double duty to the earth,
and where the frail anemone, or the faint blush of the
arbutus, in the midst of the bleak March atmosphere,
will touch your heart, like a hope of Heaven, in a field
of graves! Later come those soft, smoky days, when
the patches of winter grain show green under the
shelter of leafless woods, and the last snow-drifts, reduced
to shrunken skeletons of ice, lie upon the slope
of northern hills, leaking away their life.

Then, the grass at your door grows into the color of
the sprouting grain, and the buds upon the lilacs swell,
and burst. The peaches bloom upon the wall, and the
plums wear bodices of white. The sparkling oriole
picks string for his hammock on the sycamore, and the
sparrows twitter in pairs. The old elms throw down
their dingy flowers, and color their spray with green;
and the brooks, where you throw your worm or the
minnow, float down whole fleets of the crimson blossoms
of the maple. Finally, the oaks step into the
opening quadrille of spring, with greyish tufts of a
modest verdure, which, by and by, will be long and
glossy leaves. The dog-wood pitches his broad, white
tent, in the edge of the forest; the dandelions lie

along the hillocks, like stars in a sky of green; and
the wild cherry, growing in all the hedge-rows, without
other culture than God's, lifts up to Him, thankfully,
its tremulous white fingers.

Amid all this, come the rich rains of spring. The
affections of a boy grow up with tears to water them;
and the year blooms with showers. But the clouds
hover over an April sky, timidly—like shadows upon
innocence. The showers come gently, and drop daintily
to the earth,—with now and then a glimpse of sunshine
to make the drops bright—like so many tears of
joy.

The rain of winter is cold, and it comes in bitter
scuds that blind you; but the rain of April steals
upon you coyly, half reluctantly,—yet lovingly—like
the steps of a bride to the Altar.

It does not gather like the storm-clouds of winter,
grey and heavy along the horizon, and creep with
subtle and insensible approaches (like age) to the very
zenith; but there are a score of white-winged swimmers
afloat, that your eye has chased, as you lay
fatigued with the delicious languor of an April sun;—
nor have you scarce noticed that a little bevy of those
floating clouds had grouped together in a sombre
company. But presently, you see across the fields, the
dark grey streaks stretching like lines of mists, from the
green bosom of the valley, to that spot of sky where the

company of clouds is loitering; and with an easy
shifting of the helm, the fleet of swimmers come
drifting over you, and drop their burden into the dancing
pools, and make the flowers glisten, and the eaves
drip with their crystal bounty.

The cattle linger still, cropping the new-come grass;
and childhood laughs joyously at the warm rain;—or
under the cottage roof, catches with eager ear, the patter
of its fall.

—And with that patter on the roof,—so like to
the patter of childish feet—my story of boyish dreams
shall begin.

I.
Rain in the Garret.

IT is an old garret with big, brown rafters; and the
boards between are stained darkly with the rain-storms
of fifty years. And as the sportive April
shower quickens its flood, it seems as if its torrents
would come dashing through the shingles, upon you,
and upon your play. But it will not; for you know
that the old roof is strong; and that it has kept you,
and all that love you, for long years from the rain, and
from the cold: you know that the hardest storms of
winter will only make a little oozing leak, that trickles
down the brown stains,—like tears.

You love that old garret roof; and you nestle down
under its slope, with a sense of its protecting power
that no castle walls can give to your maturer years.

Aye, your heart clings in boyhood to the roof-tree of
the old family garret, with a grateful affection, and an
earnest confidence, that the after years—whatever may
be their successes, or their honors—can never re-create.
Under the roof-tree of his home, the boy feels SAFE:
and where, in the whole realm of life, with its bitter
toils, and its bitterer temptations, will he feel safe
again?

But this you do not know. It seems only a grand
old place; and it is capital fun to search in its corners,
and drag out some bit of quaint old furniture, with a
leg broken, and lay a cushion across it, and fix your
reins upon the lion's claws of the feet, and then—
gallop away! And you offer sister Nelly a chance, if
she will be good; and throw out very patronizing
words to little Charlie, who is mounted upon a much
humbler horse,—to wit, a decrepid nursery-chair,—as
he of right should be, since he is three years your
junior.

I know no nobler forage ground for a romantic, venturesome,
mischievous boy, than the garret of an old
family mansion, on a day of storm. It is a perfect
field of chivalry. The heavy rafters, the dashing rain,
the piles of spare mattresses to carouse upon, the
big trunks to hide in, the old white coats and hats
hanging in obscure corners, like ghosts—are great!
And it is so far away from the old lady, who keeps

rule in the nursery, that there is no possible risk of
a scolding, for twisting off the fringe of the rug. There
is no baby in the garret to wake up. There is no
`company' in the garret to be disturbed by the noise.
There is no crotchety old Uncle, or Grand-Ma, with
their everlasting—“Boys—boys!”—and then a look of
such horror!

There is great fun in groping through a tall barrel
of books and pamphlets, on the look-out for startling
pictures; and there are chestnuts in the garret, drying,
which you have discovered on a ledge of the chimney;
and you slide a few into your pocket, and munch them
quietly,—giving now and then one to Nelly, and
begging her to keep silent;—for you have a great fear
of its being forbidden fruit.

Old family garrets have their stock, as I said, of
cast-away clothes, of twenty years gone by; and it is
rare sport to put them on; buttoning in a pillow or
two for the sake of good fulness; and then to trick out
Nelly in some strange-shaped head-gear, and old-fashioned
brocade petticoat caught up with pins; and
in such guise, to steal cautiously down stairs, and creep
slily into the sitting-room,—half afraid of a scolding,
and very sure of good fun;—trying to look very sober,
and yet almost ready to die with the laugh that you
know you will make. And your mother tries to look
harshly at little Nelly for putting on her grandmother's

best bonnet; but Nelly's laughing eyes forbid it utterly;
and the mother spoils all her scolding with a
perfect shower of kisses.

After this, you go marching, very stately, into the
nursery; and utterly amaze the old nurse; and make
a deal of wonderment for the staring, half-frightened
baby, who drops his rattle, and makes a bob at you, as
if he would jump into your waistcoat pocket.

But you grow tired of this; you tire even of the
swing, and of the pranks of Charlie; and you glide
away into a corner, with an old, dog's-eared copy of
Robinson Crusoe. And you grow heart and soul into
the story, until you tremble for the poor fellow with his
guns, behind the palisade; and are yourself half dead
with fright, when you peep cautiously over the hill
with your glass, and see the cannibals at their orgies
around the fire.

Yet, after all, you think the old fellow must have
had a capital time, with a whole island to himself; and
you think you would like such a time yourself, if only
Nelly, and Charlie, could be there with you. But this
thought does not come till afterward; for the time, you
are nothing but Crusoe; you are living in his cave
with Poll the parrot, and are looking out for your
goats, and man Friday.

You dream what a nice thing it would be, for you to
slip away some pleasant morning—not to York, as

young Crusoe did, but to New York,—and take passage
as a sailor; and how, if they knew you were
going, there would be such a world of good-byes; and
how, if they did not know it, there would be such a
world of wonder!

And then the sailor's dress would be altogether such
a jaunty affair; and it would be such rare sport to lie
off upon the yards far aloft, as you have seen sailors in
pictures, looking out upon the blue and tumbling sea.
No thought now in your boyish dreams, of sleety
storms, and cables stiffened with ice, and crashing
spars, and great ice-bergs towering fearfully around
you!

You would have better luck than even Crusoe; you
would save a compass, and a Bible, and stores of
hatchets, and the captain's dog, and great puncheons
of sweetmeats (which Crusoe altogether overlooked);
and you would save a tent or two, which you could set
up on the shore, and an American flag, and a small
piece of cannon, which you could fire as often as you
liked. At night, you would sleep in a tree—though
you wonder how Crusoe did it,—and would say the
prayers you had been taught to say at home, and fall
to sleep,—dreaming of Nelly and Charlie.

At sunrise, or thereabouts, you would come down,
feeling very much refreshed; and make a very nice
breakfast off of smoked herring and sea-bread, with a little

currant jam, and a few oranges. After this you
would haul ashore a chest or two of the sailors' clothes,
and putting a few large jack-knives in your pocket,
would take a stroll over the island, and dig a cave
somewhere, and roll in a cask or two of sea-bread.
And you fancy yourself growing after a time very tall
and corpulent, and wearing a magnificent goat-skin
cap, trimmed with green ribbons, and set off with
a plume. You think you would have put a few more
guns in the palisade than Crusoe did, and charged
them with a little more grape.

After a long while, you fancy a ship would arrive,
which would carry you back; and you count upon
very great surprise on the part of your father, and little
Nelly, as you march up to the door of the old family
mansion, with plenty of gold in your pocket, and
a small bag of cocoanuts for Charlie, and with a great
deal of pleasant talk, about your island, far away in
the South Seas.

—Or, perhaps it is not Crusoe at all, that your
eyes and your heart cling to, but only some little story
about Paul and Virginia;—that dear little Virginia!
how many tears have been shed over her—not in garrets
only, or by boys only!

You would have liked Virginia—you know you
would; but you perfectly hate the beldame aunt, who
sent for her to come to France; you think she must

have been like the old school-mistress, who occasionally
boxes your ears with the cover of the spelling-book, or
makes you wear one of the girls' bonnets, that smells
strongly of paste-board, and calico.

As for black Domingue, you think he was a capital
old fellow; and you think more of him, and his bananas,
than you do of the bursting, throbbing heart of
poor Paul. As yet, Dream-life does not take hold on
love. A little maturity of heart is wanted, to make up
what the poets call sensibility. If love should come to
be a dangerous, chivalric matter, as in the case of Helen
Mar and Wallace, you can very easily conceive of it,
and can take hold of all the little accessories of male
costume, and embroidering of banners; but as for pure
sentiment, such as lies in the sweet story of Bernardin
de St. Pierre, it is quite beyond you.

The rich, soft nights, in which one might doze in his
hammock, watching the play of the silvery moonbeams
upon the orange leaves, and upon the waves,
you can understand; and you fall to dreaming of that
lovely Isle of France; and wondering if Virginia did
not perhaps have some relations on the island, who
raise pine-apples, and such sort of things, still?

—And so, with your head upon your hand, in
your quiet garret corner, over some such beguiling
story, your thought leans away from the book, into
your own dreamy cruise over the sea of life.

II.
School Dreams.

IT is a proud thing to go out from under the realm
of a school-mistress, and to be enrolled in a
company of boys who are under the guidance of a
master. It is one of the earliest steps of worldly pride,
which has before it a long and tedious ladder of ascent.
Even the advice of the old mistress, and the nine-penny
book that she thrusts into your hand as a parting gift,
pass for nothing; and her kiss of adieu, if she tenders it
in the sight of your fellows, will call up an angry rush
of blood to the cheek, that for long years, shall drown
all sense of its kindness.

You have looked admiringly many a day upon the
tall fellows who play at the door of Dr. Bidlow's
school: you have looked with reverence, second only

to that felt for the old village church, upon its dark-looking
heavy brick walls. It seemed to be redolent of
learning; and stopping at times, to gaze upon the
gallipots and broken retorts, at the second story
window, you have pondered, in your boyish way,
upon the inscrutable wonders of Science, and the
ineffable dignity of Dr. Bidlow's brick school!

Dr. Bidlow seems to you to belong to a race of
giants; and yet he is a spare, thin man, with a hooked
nose, a large, flat, gold watch-key, a crack in his voice,
a wig, and very dirty wristbands. Still you stand
in awe at the mere sight of him;—an awe that is
very much encouraged by a report made to you by a
small boy,—that “Old Bid” keeps a large ebony ruler
in his desk. You are amazed at the small boy's
audacity: it astonishes you that any one who had ever
smelt the strong fumes of sulphur and ether in the
Doctor's room, and had seen him turn red vinegar
blue, (as they say he does) should call him “Old
Bid!”

You, however, come very little under his control:
you enter upon the proud life, in the small boy's
department,—under the dominion of the English
master. He is a different personage from Dr. Bidlow:
he is a dapper, little man, who twinkles his eye
in a peculiar fashion, and who has a way of marching
about the school-room with his hands crossed behind

him, giving a playful flirt to his coat-tails. He wears a
pen tucked behind his ear: his hair is carefully set up
at the sides, and upon the top, to conceal (as you think
later in life) his diminutive height; and he steps very
springly around behind the benches, glancing now and
then at the books,—cautioning one scholar about his
dogs-ears, and startling another from a doze, by a very
loud and odious snap of his forefinger upon the boy's
head.

At other times, he sticks a hand in the armlet of his
waistcoat: he brandishes in the other a thickish bit of
smooth cherry-wood,—sometimes dressing his hair
withal; and again, giving his head a slight scratch
behind the ear, while he takes occasion at the same
time, for an oblique glance at a fat boy in the corner,
who is reaching down from his seat after a little paper
pellet, that has just been discharged at him from some
unknown quarter. The master steals very cautiously
and quickly to the rear of the stooping boy,—
dreadfully exposed by his unfortunate position,—and
inflicts a stinging blow. A weak-eyed little scholar on
the next bench ventures a modest titter; at which the
assistant makes a significant motion with his ruler—
on the seat, as it were, of an imaginary pair of
pantaloons,—which renders the weak-eyed boy on a
sudden, very insensible to the recent joke.

You, meantime, profess to be very much engrossed

with your grammar—turned up-side down: you think
it must have hurt; and are only sorry that it did not
happen to a tall, dark-faced boy who cheated you in a
swop of jack-knives. You innocently think that he
must be a very bad boy; and fancy—aided by a
suggestion of the old nurse at home, on the same
point,—that he will one day come to the gallows.

There is a platform on one side of the school-room,
where the teacher sits at a little red table, and they
have a tradition among the boys, that a pin properly
bent, was one day put into the chair of the English
master, and that he did not wear his hand in the
armlet of his waistcoat, for two whole days thereafter.
Yet his air of dignity seems proper enough in a man
of such erudition, and such grasp of imagination, as he
must possess. For he can quote poetry,—some of the
big scholars have heard him do it:—he can parse the
whole of Paradise Lost; and he can cipher in Long
Division, and the Rule of Three, as if it was all
Simple Addition; and then—such a hand as he writes,
and such a superb capital B! It is hard to understand
how he does it.

Sometimes, lifting the lid of your desk, where you
pretend to be very busy with your papers, you steal the
reading of some brief passage of Lazy Lawrence, or of
the Hungarian Brothers, and muse about it for hours
afterward, to the great detriment of your ciphering;

or, deeply lost in the story of the Scottish Chiefs, you
fall to comparing such villains as Menteith with the
stout boys who tease you; and you only wish they
could come within reach of the fierce Kirkpatrick's
claymore.

But you are frighted out of this stolen reading by a
circumstance that stirs your young blood very strangely.
The master is looking very sourly on a certain morning,
and has caught sight of the little weak-eyed boy over
beyond you, reading Roderick Random. He sends
out for a long birch rod, and having trimmed off the
leaves carefully,—with a glance or two in your direction,
—he marches up behind the bench of the poor
culprit,—who turns deathly pale,—grapples him by the
collar, drags him out over the desks, his limbs dangling
in a shocking way against the sharp angles, and having
him fairly in the middle of the room, clinches his rod
with a new, and, as it seems to you, a very sportive
grip.

You shudder fearfully.

“Please don't whip me,” says the boy whimpering.

“Aha!” says the smirking pedagogue, bringing
down the stick with a quick, sharp cut,—“you don't
like it, eh?”

The poor fellow screams, and struggles to escape;
but the blows come faster and thicker. The blood
tingles in your finger ends with indignation.

“Please don't strike me again,” says the boy sobbing
and taking breath, as he writhes about the legs of the
master;—“I won't read another time.”

“Ah, you won't, sir—won't you? I don't mean you
shall, sir,” and the blows fall thick and fast,—until
the poor fellow crawls back, utterly crest-fallen and
heart-sick, to sob over his books.

You grow into a sudden boldness: you wish you
were only large enough to beat the master: you know
such treatment would make you miserable: you
shudder at the thought of it: you do not believe he
would dare: you know the other boy has got no
father. This seems to throw a new light upon the
matter, but it only intensifies your indignation. You
are sure that no father would suffer it; or if you
thought so, it would sadly weaken your love for him.
You pray Heaven that it may never be brought to such
proof.

—Let a boy once distrust the love or the tenderness
of his parents, and the last resort of his yearning
affections—so far as the world goes—is utterly gone.
He is in the sure road to a bitter fate. His heart will
take on a hard iron covering, that will flash out plenty
of fire in his after contact with the world, but it will
never—never melt!

There are some tall trees that overshadow an angle
of the school-house; and the larger scholars play some

very surprising gymnastic tricks upon their lower limbs:
one boy for instance, will hang for an incredible length
of time by his feet, with his head down; and when you
tell Charlie of it at night, with such additions as your
boyish imagination can contrive, the old nurse is
shocked, and states very gravely that it is dangerous;
and that the blood all runs to the head, and sometimes
bursts out of the eyes and mouth. You look at that
particular boy with astonishment afterward; and expect
to see him some day burst into bleeding from the nose
and ears, and flood the school-room benches.

In time, however, you get to performing some
modest experiments yourself upon the very lowest
limbs,—taking care to avoid the observation of the
larger boys, who else might laugh at you: you
especially avoid the notice of one stout fellow in pea-green
breeches, who is a sort of `bully' among the
small boys, and who delights in kicking your marbles
about, very accidentally. He has a fashion too of
twisting his handkerchief into what he calls a `snapper,'
with a knot at the end, and cracking at you with it,
very much to the irritation of your spirits, and of your
legs.

Sometimes, when he has brought you to an angry
burst of tears, he will very graciously force upon you
the handkerchief, and insist upon your cracking him in
return; which, as you know nothing about his effective

method of making the knot bite, is a very harmless
proposal on his part.

But you have still stronger reason to remember that
boy. There are trees, as I said, near the school; and
you get the reputation after a time of a good climber.
One day you are well in the tops of the trees, and being
dared by the boys below, you venture higher—higher
than any boy has ever gone before. You feel very
proudly; but just then catch sight of the sneering face
of your old enemy of the snapper; and he dares you to
go upon a limb that he points out.

The rest say,—for you hear them plainly—“it won't
bear him.” And Frank, a great friend of yours, shouts
loudly to you,—not to try.

“Pho,” says your tormentor,—“the little coward!”

If you could whip him, you would go down the tree
and do it willingly: as it is, you cannot let him
triumph: so you advance cautiously out upon the
limb: it bends and sways fearfully with your weight:
presently it cracks: you try to return, but it is too late:
you feel yourself going:—your mind flashes home—
over your life—your hope—your fate, like lightning:
then comes a sense of dizziness,—a succession of quick
blows, and a dull, heavy crash!

You are conscious of nothing again, until you find
yourself in the great hall of the school, covered with

blood, the old Doctor standing over you with a phial,
and Frank kneeling by you, and holding your shattered
arm, which has been broken by the fall.

After this, come those long, weary days of confinement,
when you lie still, through all the hours of noon,
looking out upon the cheerful sunshine, only through
the windows of your little room. Yet it seems a grand
thing to have the whole household attendant upon you.
The doors are opened and shut softly, and they all step
noiselessly about your chamber; and when you groan
with pain, you are sure of meeting sad, sympathizing
looks. Your mother will step gently to your side and
lay her cool, white hand upon your forehead; and little
Nelly will gaze at you from the foot of your bed with
a sad earnestness, and with tears of pity in her soft
hazel eyes. And afterward, as your pain passes away,
she will bring you her prettiest books, and fresh
flowers, and whatever she knows you will love.

But it is dreadful, when you wake at night, from
your feverish slumber, and see nothing but the spectral
shadows that the sick-lamp upon the hearth throws
aslant the walls; and hear nothing but the heavy
breathing of the old nurse in the easy chair, and
the ticking of the clock upon the mantel! Then,
silence and the night crowd upon your soul drearily.
But your thought is active. It shapes at your bed-side
the loved figure of your mother, or it calls up the

whole company of Dr. Bidlow's boys; and weeks
of study or of play, group like magic on your
quickened vision:—then, a twinge of pain will call
again the dreariness, and your head tosses upon the
pillow, and your eye searches the gloom vainly for
pleasant faces; and your fears brood on that drearier,
coming night of Death—far longer, and far more
cheerless than this.

But even here, the memory of some little prayer
you have been taught, which promises a Morning after
the Night, comes to your throbbing brain; and its
murmur on your fevered lips, as you breathe it, soothes
like a caress of angels, and wooes you to smiles and
sleep.

As the days pass, you grow stronger; and Frank
comes in to tell you of the school, and that your old
tormentor has been expelled: and you grow into
a strong friendship with Frank, and you think of
yourselves as a new Damon and Pythias—and that you
will some day live together in a fine house, with plenty
of horses, and plenty of chestnut trees. Alas, the boy
counts little on those later and bitter fates of life, which
sever his early friendships, like wisps of straw!

At other times, with your eye upon the sleek, trim
figure of the Doctor, and upon his huge bunch of
watch seals, you think you will some day be a Doctor;
and that with a wife and children, and a respectable

gig, and gold watch, with seals to match, you would
needs be a very happy fellow.

And with such fancies drifting on your thought, you
count for the hundredth time the figures upon the
curtains of your bed,—you trace out the flower wreaths
upon the paper-hangings of your room;—your eyes
rest idly on the cat playing with the fringe of the
curtain;—you see your mother sitting with her
needle-work beside the fire;—you watch the sunbeams
as they drift along the carpet, from morning until
noon; and from noon till night, you watch them playing
on the leaves, and dropping spangles on the lawn; and
as you watch—you dream.

III.
Boy Sentiment.

WEEKS, and even years of your boyhood roll on,
in the which your dreams are growing wider
and grander,—even as the Spring, which I have made
the type of the boy-age, is stretching its foliage farther
and farther, and dropping longer and heavier shadows
on the land.

Nelly, that sweet sister, has grown into your heart
strangely; and you think that all they write in their
books about love, cannot equal your fondness for little
Nelly. She is pretty, they say; but what do you care
for her prettiness? She is so good, so kind—so
watchful of all your wants, so willing to yield to your
haughty claims!

But, alas, it is only when this sisterly love is lost

forever,—only when the inexorable world separates a
family and tosses it upon the waves of fate to wide-lying
distances—perhaps to graves!—that a man feels,
what a boy can never know,—the disinterested and
abiding affection of a sister.

All this, that I have set down, comes back to you
long afterward, when you recal with tears of regret,
your reproachful words, or some swift outbreak of
passion.

Little Madge is a friend of Nelly's—a mischievous,
blue-eyed hoyden. They tease you about Madge.
You do not of course care one straw for her, but yet it
is rather pleasant to be teased thus. Nelly never does
this; oh no, not she. I do not know but in the age of
childhood, the sister is jealous of the affections of a
brother, and would keep his heart wholly at home,
until suddenly, and strangely, she finds her own—
wandering.

But after all, Madge is pretty; and there is something
taking in her name. Old people, and very
precise people, call her Margaret Boyne. But you do
not: it is only plain Madge;—it sounds like her—very
rapid and mischievous. It would be the most absurd
thing in the world for you to like her, for she teases you
in innumerable ways: she laughs at your big shoes;
(such a sweet little foot as she has!) and she pins strips
of paper on your coat collar; and time and again she

has worn off your hat in triumph, very well knowing
that you, such a quiet body, and so much afraid of her,
will never venture upon any liberties with her gipsy
bonnet.

You sometimes wish, in your vexation, as you see
her running, that she would fall and hurt herself badly;
but the next moment, it seems a very wicked wish, and
you renounce it. Once, she did come very near it.
You were all playing together by the big swing—(how
plainly it swings in your memory now!)—Madge had
the seat, and you were famous for running under with a
long push, which Madge liked better than anything
else: well, you have half run over the ground, when
crash comes the swing, and poor Madge with it! You
fairly scream as you catch her up. But she is not hurt
—only a cry of fright, and a little sprain of that fairy
ancle; and as she brushes away the tears, and those
flaxen curls, and breaks into a merry laugh,—half at
your woe-worn face, and half in vexation at herself;
and leans her hand (such a hand!) upon your shoulder,
to limp away into the shade, you dream—your first
dream of love.

But it is only a dream, not at all acknowledged by
you: she is three or four years your junior,—too young
altogether. It is very absurd to talk about it. There
is nothing to be said of Madge—only—Madge! The
name does it.

It is rather a pretty name to write. You are fond
of making capital M's; and sometimes you follow it
with a capital A. Then you practise a little upon a D,
and perhaps back it up with a G. Of course it is the
merest accident that these letters come together. It
seems funny to you—very. And as a proof that they
are made at random, you make a T or an R before
them, and some other quite irrelevant letters after it.

Finally, as a sort of security against all suspicion, you
cross it out—cross it a great many ways;—even holding
it up to the light, to see that there should be no air of
intention about it.

—You need have no fear, Clarence, that your
hieroglyphics will be studied so closely. Accidental as
they are, you are very much more interested in them
than any one else!

—It is a common fallacy of this dream in most
stages of life, that a vast number of persons employ
their time chiefly in spying out its operations.

Yet Madge cares nothing about you, that you know
of. Perhaps it is the very reason, though you do not
suspect it then, why you care so much for her. At any
rate, she is a friend of Nelly's; and it is your duty not
to dislike her. Nelly too, sweet Nelly, gets an inkling
of matters; for sisters are very shrewd in suspicions of
this sort—shrewder than brothers or fathers; and like

the good kind girl that she is, she wishes to humor even
your weakness.

Madge drops in to tea quite often: Nelly has something
in particular to show her, two or three times a
week. Good Nelly,—perhaps she is making your
troubles all the greater! You gather large bunches of
grapes for Madge—because she is a friend of Nelly's—
which she doesn't want at all, and very pretty bouquets,
which she either drops, or pulls to pieces.

In the presence of your father one day, you drop
some hint about Madge, in a very careless way—a way
shrewdly calculated to lay all suspicion;—at which
your father laughs. This is odd: it makes you wonder
if your father was ever in love himself.

You rather think that he has been.

Madge's father is dead and her mother is poor; and
you sometimes dream, how—whatever your father may
think or feel—you will some day make a large fortune,
in some very easy way, and build a snug cottage, and
have one horse for your carriage, and one for your wife,
(not Madge, of course—that is absurd) and a turtle
shell cat for your wife's mother, and a pretty gate to
the front yard, and plenty of shrubbery, and how your
wife will come dancing down the path to meet you,—
as the Wife does in Mr. Irving's Sketch Book,—and
how she will have a harp inside, and will wear white
dresses, with a blue sash.

—Poor Clarence, it never once occurs to you, that
even Madge may grow fat, and wear check aprons, and
snuffy-brown dresses of woollen stuff, and twist her hair
in yellow papers! Oh no, boyhood has no such dreams
as that!

I shall leave you here in the middle of your first
foray into the world of sentiment, with those wicked
blue eyes chasing rainbows over your heart, and those
little feet walking every day into your affections.
I shall leave you before the affair has ripened into any
overtures, and while there is only a sixpence split
in halves, and tied about your neck, and Maggie's
neck, to bind your destinies together.

If I even hinted at any probability of your marrying
her, or of your not marrying her, you would be very
likely to dispute me. One knows his own feelings, or
thinks he does, so much better than any one can
tell him!

IV.
A Friend made and Friend Lost.

TO visit, is a great thing in the boy calendar:—
not to visit this or that neighbor,—to drink
tea, or eat strawberries, or play at draughts;—but, to
go away on a visit in a coach, with a trunk, and
a great-coat, and an umbrella:—this is large!

It makes no difference, that they wish to be rid
of your noise, now that Charlie is sick of a fever:—
the reason is not at all in the way of your pride of
visiting. You are to have a long ride in a coach,
and eat a dinner at a tavern, and to see a new town
almost as large as the one you live in, and you are to
make new acquaintances. In short, you are to see the
world:—a very proud thing it is, to see the world!

As you journey on, after bidding your friends adieu,

and as you see fences and houses to which you have
not been used, you think them very odd indeed: but it
occurs to you, that the geographies speak of very
various national characteristics, and you are greatly
gratified with this opportunity of verifying your study.
You see new crops too, perhaps a broad-leaved tobacco
field, which reminds you pleasantly of the luxuriant
vegetation of the tropics, spoken of by Peter Parley,
and others.

As for the houses and barns in the new town, they
quite startle you with their strangeness: you observe
that some of the latter instead of having one stable
door, have five or six, a fact which puzzles you very
much indeed. You observe farther, that the houses
many of them have balustrades upon the top, which
seems to you a very wonderful adaptation to the wants
of boys, who wish to fly kites, or to play upon
the roof. You notice with special favor, one very low
roof which you might climb upon by a mere plank, and
you think the boys, whose father lives in that house,
are very fortunate boys.

Your old aunt, whom you visit, you think wears a
very queer cap, being altogether different from that of
the old nurse, or of Mrs. Boyne,—Madge's mother.
As for the house she lives in, it is quite wonderful.
There are such an immense number of closets, and
closets within closets, reminding you of the mysteries

of Rinaldo Rinaldini. Beside which, there are immensely
curious bits of old furniture—so black and
heavy, and with such curious carving!—and you think
of the old wainscot in the Children of the Abbey.
You think you will never tire of rambling about in its
odd corners, and of what glorious stories you will have
to tell of it, when you go back to Nelly, and Charlie.

As for acquaintances, you fall in the very first day
with a tall boy next door, called Nat. which seems an
extraordinary name. Besides, he has travelled; and
as he sits with you on the summer nights under the
linden trees, he tells you gorgeous stories of the things
he has seen. He has made the voyage to London;
and he talks about the ship (a real ship) and starboard
and larboard, and the spanker, in a way quite surprising;
and he takes the stern oar, in the little skiff when you
row off in the cove abreast of the town, in a most
seaman-like way.

He bewilders you too, with his talk about the great
bridges of London—London bridge specially, where
they sell kids for a penny; which story your new
acquaintance, unfortunately, does not confirm. You
have read of these bridges, and seen pictures of them
in the Wonders of the World; but then Nat. has seen
them with his own eyes: he has literally walked over
London Bridge, on his own feet! You look at his
very shoes in wonderment, and are surprised you do

not find some startling difference between those shoes,
and your shoes. But there is none—only yours are a
trifle stouter in the welt. You think Nat. one of the
fortunate boys of this world—born, as your old nurse
used to say—with a gold spoon in his mouth.

Beside Nat, there is a girl lives over the opposite
side of the way, named Jenny, with an eye as black as
a coal; and a half a year older than you; but about
your height;—whom you fancy amazingly.

She has any quantity of toys, that she lets you play
with, as if they were your own. And she has an odd,
old uncle, who sometimes makes you stand up together,
and then marries you after his fashion,—much to the
amusement of a grown up house-maid, whenever she
gets a peep at the performance. And it makes you
somewhat proud to hear her called your wife; and you
wonder to yourself, dreamily, if it won't be true some
day or other.

—Fie, Clarence, where is your split sixpence,
and your blue ribbon!

Jenny is romantic, and talks of Thaddeus of Warsaw
in a very touching manner, and promises to lend you
the book. She folds billets in a lover's fashion, and
practises love-knots upon her bonnet strings. She looks
out of the corners of her eyes very often, and sighs.
She is frequently by herself, and pulls flowers to pieces.

She has great pity for middle-aged bachelors, and
thinks them all disappointed men.

After a time she writes notes to you, begging you
would answer them at the earliest possible moment, and
signs herself—`your attached Jenny.' She takes the
marriage farce of her uncle in a cold way—as trifling
with a very serious subject, and looks tenderly at you.
She is very much shocked when her uncle offers to kiss
her; and when he proposes it to you, she is equally
indignant, but—with a great change of color.

Nat. says one day, in a confidential conversation, that
it won't do to marry a woman six months older than
yourself; and this coming from Nat. who has been to
London, rather staggers you. You sometimes think
that you would like to marry Madge and Jenny both, if
the thing were possible; for Nat. says they sometimes
do so the other side of the ocean, though he has never
seen it himself.

—Ah, Clarence, you will have no such weakness
as you grow older: you will find that Providence has
charitably, so tempered our affections, that every man
of only ordinary nerve will be amply satisfied with a
single wife!

All this time,—for you are making your visit a very
long one, so that autumn has come, and the nights are
growing cool, and Jenny and yourself are transferring
your little coquetries to the chimney corner;—poor

Charlie lies sick, at home. Boyhood, thank Heaven,
does not suffer severely from sympathy when the object
is remote. And those letters from the mother, telling
you that Charlie cannot play,—cannot talk even as he
used to do; and that perhaps his `Heavenly Father
will take him away, to be with him in the better
world,' disturb you for a time only. Sometimes,
however, they come back to your thought on a
wakeful night, and you dream about his suffering, and
think—why it is not you, but Charlie, who is sick?
The thought puzzles you; and well it may, for in it lies
the whole mystery of our fate.

Those letters grow more and more discouraging, and
the kind admonitions of your mother grow more
earnest, as if (though the thought does not come to
you until years afterward) she was preparing herself to
fasten upon you, that surplus of affection, which she
fears may soon be withdrawn forever from the sick
child.

It is on a frosty, bleak evening, when you are playing
with Nat. that the letter reaches you which says
Charlie is growing worse, and that you must come to
your home. It makes a dreamy night for you—
fancying how Charlie will look, and if sickness has
altered him much, and if he will not be well by
Christmas. From this, you fall away in your reverie, to
the odd old house, and its secret cupboards, and your

aunt's queer caps: then come up those black eyes of
`your attached Jenny,' and you think it a pity that she
is six months older than you; and again—as you recal
one of her sighs—you think—that six months are not
much after all!

You bid her good-bye, with a little sentiment
swelling in your throat, and are mortally afraid Nat.
will see your lip tremble. Of course you promise to
write, and squeeze her hand with an honesty, you do
not think of doubting—for weeks.

It is a dull, cold ride, that day, for you. The
winds sweep over the withered corn-fields, with a harsh,
chilly whistle; and the surfaces of the little pools by the
road-side are tossed up into cold blue wrinkles of water.
Here and there a flock of quail, with their feathers
ruffled in the autumn gusts, tread through the hard, dry
stubble of an oat-field; or startled by the snap of the
driver's whip, they stare a moment at the coach, then
whir away down the cold current of the wind. The
blue jays scream from the road-side oaks, and the last
of the blue and purple asters shiver along the wall.
And as the sun sinks, reddening all the western clouds,
to the color of the frosted maples,—light lines of the
Aurora gush up from the northern hills, and trail their
splintered fingers far over the autumn sky.

It is quite dark when you reach home, but you see
the bright reflection of a fire within, and presently at

the open door, Nelly clapping her hands for welcome.
But there are sad faces when you enter. Your mother
folds you to her heart; but at your first noisy out-burst
of joy, puts her finger on her lip, and whispers poor
Charlie's name. The Doctor you see too, slipping
softly out of the bed-room door with glasses in his
hand; and—you hardly know how—your spirits grow
sad, and your heart gravitates to the heavy air of all
about you.

You cannot see Charlie, Nelly says;—and you cannot
in the quiet parlor, tell Nelly a single one of the many
things, which you had hoped to tell her. She says—
`Charlie has grown so thin and so pale, you would
never know him.' You listen to her, but you cannot
talk: she asks you what you have seen, and you begin,
for a moment joyously; but when they open the door
of the sick room, and you hear a faint sigh, you cannot
go on. You sit still, with your hand in Nelly's, and
look thoughtfully into the blaze.

You drop to sleep after that day's fatigue, with
singular and perplexed fancies haunting you; and when
you wake up with a shudder in the middle of the
night, you have a fancy that Charlie is really dead:
you dream of seeing him pale and thin, as Nelly
described him, and with the starched grave clothes on
him. You toss over in your bed, and grow hot and
feverish. You cannot sleep; and you get up stealthily,

and creep down stairs; a light is burning in the hall:
the bed-room door stands half open, and you listen—
fancying you hear a whisper. You steal on through
the hall, and edge around the side of the door. A
little lamp is flickering on the hearth, and the gaunt
shadow of the bedstead lies dark upon the ceiling.
Your mother is in her chair, with her head upon her
hand—though it is long after midnight. The Doctor
is standing with his back toward you, and with Charlie's
little wrist in his fingers; and you hear hard breathing,
and now and then, a low sigh from your mother's
chair.

An occasional gleam of fire-light makes the gaunt
shadows stagger on the wall, like something spectral.
You look wildly at them, and at the bed where your
own brother—your laughing, gay-hearted brother, is
lying. You long to see him, and sidle up softly a step
or two: but your mother's ear has caught the sound,
and she beckons you to her, and folds you again in her
embrace. You whisper to her what you wish. She
rises, and takes you by the hand, to lead you to the
bedside.

The Doctor looks very solemnly, as we approach.
He takes out his watch. He is not counting Charlie's
pulse, for he has dropped his hand; and it lies carelessly,
but oh, how thin! over the edge of the bed.

He shakes his head mournfully at your mother; and

she springs forward, dropping your hand, and lays her
fingers upon the forehead of the boy, and passes her
hand over his mouth.

“Is he asleep, Doctor?” she says, in a tone you
do not know.

“Be calm, madam.” The Doctor is very calm.

“I am calm,” says your mother; but you do not
think it, for you see her tremble very plainly.

“Dear madam, he will never waken in this world!”

There is no cry,—only a bowing down of your
mother's head upon the body of poor, dead Charlie!—
and only when you see her form shake and quiver with
the deep, smothered sobs, your crying bursts forth loud
and strong.

The Doctor lifts you in his arms, that you may
see—that pale head,—those blue eyes all sunken,—that
flaxen hair gone,—those white lips pinched and hard!
—Never, never, will the boy forget his first terrible
sight of Death!

In your silent chamber, after the storm of sobs has
wearied you, the boy-dreams are strange and earnest.
They take hold on that awful Visitant,—that strange
slipping away from life, of which we know so little, and
yet know, alas, so much! Charlie that was your
brother, is now only a name: perhaps he is an angel:
perhaps (for the old nurse has said it, when he was
ugly—and now, you hate her for it) he is with Satan.

But you are sure this cannot be: you are sure that
God who made him suffer, would not now quicken, and
multiply his suffering. It agrees with your religion to
think so; and just now, you want your religion to help
you all it can.

You toss in your bed, thinking over and over of that
strange thing—Death:—and that perhaps it may
overtake you, before you are a man; and you sob out
those prayers (you scarce know why) which ask God to
keep life in you. You think the involuntary fear that
makes your little prayer full of sobs, is a holy feeling:—
and so it is a holy feeling—the same feeling which
makes a stricken child, yearn for the embrace, and
the protection of a Parent. But you will find there
are those canting ones, trying to persuade you at a
later day, that it is a mere animal fear, and not to be
cherished.

You feel an access of goodness growing out of your
boyish grief: you feel right-minded: it seems as if
your little brother in going to Heaven, had opened a
pathway thither, down which, goodness comes streaming
over your soul.

You think how good a life you will lead; and you
map out great purposes, spreading themselves over the
school-weeks of your remaining boyhood; and you love
your friends, or seem to, far more dearly than you ever
loved them before; and you forgive the boy who

provoked you to that sad fall from the oaks, and you
forgive him all his wearisome teasings. But you
cannot forgive yourself for some harsh words that
you have once spoken to Charlie: still less can you
forgive yourself for having once struck him, in passion,
with your fist. You cannot forget his sobs then:—
if he were only alive one little instant, to let you say,—
“Charlie, will you forgive me?”

Yourself, you cannot forgive; and sobbing over it,
and murmuring “Dear—dear Charlie!”—you drop into
a troubled sleep.

V.
Boy Religion.

IS any weak soul frightened, that I should write
of the Religion of the boy? How indeed could I
cover the field of his moral, or intellectual growth, if I
left unnoticed those dreams of futurity and of goodness,
which come sometimes to his quieter moments, and
oftener, to his hours of vexation and trouble? It
would be as wise to describe the season of Spring, with
no note of the silent influences of that burning Day-god,
which is melting day by day the shattered ice-drifts
of Winter;—which is filling every bud with succulence,
and painting one flower with crimson, and another with
white.

I know there is a feeling—by much too general as it
seems to me,—that the subject may not be approached,

except through the dicta of certain ecclesiastic bodies;—
and that the language which touches it, must not be
that every-day language which mirrors the vitality of
our thought,—but should have some twist of that
theologic mannerism, which is as cold to the boy, as to
the busy man of the world.

I know very well that a great many good souls will
call levity, what I call honesty; and will abjure that
familiar handling of the boy's lien upon Eternity, which
my story will show. But I shall feel sure that in
keeping true to Nature with word and with thought, I
shall in no way offend against those Highest truths, to
which all truthfulness is kindred.

You have Christian teachers, who speak always
reverently of the Bible: you grow up in the hearing
of daily prayers: nay, you are perhaps taught to say
them.

Sometimes they have a meaning, and sometimes they
have none. They have a meaning, when your heart is
troubled,—when a grief or a wrong weighs upon you:
then, the keeping of the Father, which you implore,
seems to come from the bottom of your soul; and your
eye suffuses with such tears of feeling, as you count
holy, and as you love to cherish in your memory.

But, they have no meaning, when some trifling
vexation angers you, and a distaste for all about you,
breeds a distaste for all above you. In the long hours

of toilsome days, little thought comes over you of the
morning prayer; and only when evening deepens its
shadows, and your boyish vexations fatigue you to
thoughtfulness, do you dream of that coming, and
endless night, to which,—they tell you,—prayers soften
the way.

Sometimes upon a Summer Sunday, when you are
wakeful upon your seat in church, with some strong-worded
preacher, who says things that half fright you,
it occurs to you to consider how much goodness you
are made of; and whether there be enough of it after
all, to carry you safely away from the clutch of Evil?
And straightway you reckon up those friendships where
your heart lies: you know you are a true and honest
friend to Frank; and you love your mother, and your
father: as for Nelly, Heaven knows, you could not
contrive a way to love her better than you do.

You dare not take much credit to yourself for the
love of little Madge:—partly because you have sometimes
caught yourself trying—not to love her: and
partly because the black-eyed Jenny comes in the
way. Yet you can find no command in the Catechism,
to love one girl to the exclusion of all other
girls. It is somewhat doubtful if you ever do find it.
But, as for loving some half dozen you could name,
whose images drift through your thought, in dirty,
salmon-colored frocks, and slovenly shoes, it is quite

impossible; and suddenly this thought, coupled with
a lingering remembrance of the pea-green pantaloons,
utterly breaks down your hopes.

Yet, you muse again,—there are plenty of good
people as the times go, who have their dislikes, and
who speak them too. Even the sharp-talking clergyman,
you have heard say some very sour things about
his landlord, who raised his rent the last year. And
you know that he did not talk as mildly as he does in
the Church, when he found Frank and yourself quietly
filching a few of his peaches, through the orchard
fence.

But your clergyman will say perhaps, with what
seems to you, quite unnecessary coldness, that goodness
is not to be reckoned in your chances of safety;—
that there is a Higher Goodness, whose merit is All-Sufficient.
This puzzles you sadly; nor will you
escape the puzzle, until in the presence of the Home
altar, which seems to guard you, as the Lares guarded
Roman children, you feel—you cannot tell how,—
that good actions must spring from good sources; and
that those sources must lie in that Heaven, toward
which your boyish spirit yearns, as you kneel at your
mother's side.

Conscience too, is all the while approving you for
deeds well done; and,—wicked as you fear the preacher
might judge it,—you cannot but found on those deeds,

a hope that your prayer at night flows more easily,
more freely, and more holily toward “Our Father in
Heaven.” Nor indeed, later in life,—whatever may be
the ill-advised expressions of human teachers—will you
ever find that Duty performed, and generous endeavor
will stand one whit in the way either of Faith, or of
Love. Striving to be good, is a very direct road
toward Goodness; and if life be so tempered by high
motive as to make actions always good, Faith is
unconsciously won.

Another notion that disturbs you very much, is
your positive dislike of long sermons, and of such
singing as they have when the organist is away.
You cannot get the force of that verse of Dr. Watts
which likens heaven to a never-ending Sabbath; you
do hope—though it seems a half wicked hope—that
old Dr. —, will not be the preacher. You think
that your heart in its best moments, craves for something
more lovable. You suggest this perhaps to
some Sunday teacher, who only shakes his head sourly,
and tells you it is a thought that the Devil is putting
in your brain. It strikes you oddly that the Devil
should be using a verse of Dr. Watts to puzzle you!
But if it be so, he keeps it sticking by your thought
very pertinaciously, until some simple utterance of
your mother about the Love that reigns in the other

world, seems on a sudden to widen Heaven, and to
waft away your doubts like a cloud.

It excites your wonder not a little, to find people
who talk gravely and heartily of the excellence of
sermons and of Church-going, do sometimes fall asleep
under it all. And you wonder—if they really like
preaching so well,—why they do not buy some of the
minister's old manuscripts, and read them over on
week-days;—or, invite the Clergyman to preach to
them in a quiet way in private?

—Ah, Clarence, you do not yet know the poor
weakness of even maturest manhood, and the feeble
gropings of the soul toward a soul's paradise, in the
best of the world! You do not yet know either that
ignorance and fear will be thrusting their untruth and
false show into the very essentials of Religion.

Again, you wonder,—if the Clergymen are all such
very good men as you are taught to believe, why it is,
that every little while people will be trying to send
them off; and very anxious to prove that instead of
being so good, they are in fact, very stupid and bad
men. At that day, you have no clear conceptions
of the distinction between stupidity and vice; and
think that a good man must necessarily say very
eloquent things. You will find yourself sadly mistaken
on this point, before you get on very far in life.

Heaven, when your mother peoples it with friends

gone, and little Charlie, and that better Friend, who,
she says, took Charlie in his arms, and is now his
Father, above the skies, seems a place to be loved, and
longed for. But—to think that Mr. Such-an-one, who
is only good on Sundays, will be there too; and to
think of his talking as he does, of a place which you
are sure he would spoil if he were there,—puzzles you
again; and you relapse into wonder, doubt and
yearning.

—And there, Clarence, for the present I shall
leave you. A wide, rich Heaven hangs above you,
but it hangs very high. A wide, rough world is
around you, and it lies very low!

I am assuming in these sketches no office of a
teacher. I am seeking only to make a truthful analysis
of the boyish thought and feeling. But having
ventured thus far into what may seem sacred ground,
I shall venture still farther, and clinch my matter with
a moral.

There is very much Religious teaching, even in so
good a country as New England, which is far too
harsh, too dry, too cold for the heart of a boy. Long
sermons, doctrinal precepts, and such tediously-worded
dogmas as were uttered by those honest, but hard-spoken
men—the Westminster Divines, fatigue, and
puzzle, and dispirit him.

They may be well enough for those strong souls
which strengthen by task-work, or for those mature
people whose iron habit of self-denial has made patience
a cardinal virtue; but they fall (experto crede) upon
the unfledged faculties of the boy, like a winter's rain
upon Spring flowers,—like hammers of iron upon lithe
timber. They may make deep impression upon his
moral nature, but there is great danger of a sad
rebound.

Is it absurd to suppose that some adaptation is
desirable? And might not the teachings of that Religion,
which is the Ægis of our moral being, be
inwrought with some of those finer harmonies of speech
and form—which were given to wise ends;—and lure
the boyish soul, by something akin to that gentleness,
which belonged to the Nazarene Teacher; and which
provided—not only, meat for men, but “milk for
babes?”

VI.
A New England Squire.

FRANK has a grandfather living in the country,
a good specimen of the old fashioned New
England farmer. And—go where one will, the world
over—I know of no race of men, who taken together,
possess more integrity, more intelligence, and more of
those elements of comfort, which go to make a home
beloved, and the social basis firm, than the New
England farmers.

They are not brilliant, nor are they highly refined;
they know nothing of arts, histrionic or dramatic;
they know only so much of older nations as their
histories and newspapers teach them; in the fashionable
world they hold no place;—but in energy, in
industry, in hardy virtue, in substantial knowledge,

and in manly independence, they make up a race, that
is hard to be matched.

The French peasantry are, in all the essentials of
intelligence, and sterling worth, infants, compared with
them: and the farmers of England are either the
merest jockeys in grain, with few ideas beyond their
sacks, samples, and market-days;—or, with added
cultivation, they lose their independence in a subserviency
to some neighbor patron of rank; and superior
intelligence teaches them no lesson so quickly, as that
their brethren of the glebe are unequal to them, and
are to be left to their cattle and the goad.

There are English farmers indeed, who are men
in earnest, who read the papers, and who keep the
current of the year's intelligence; but such men are
the exceptions. In New England, with the school
upon every third hill-side, and the self-regulating, free-acting
church, to watch every valley with week-day
quiet, and to wake every valley with Sabbath sound,
the men become as a class, bold, intelligent, and
honest actors, who would make again, as they have
made before, a terrible army of defence; and who
would find reasons for their actions, as strong as their
armies.

Frank's grandfather has silver hair, but is still
hale, erect, and strong. His dress is homely, but neat.
Being a thorough-going Protectionist, he has no fancy

for the gew-gaws of foreign importation, and makes it
a point to appear always in the village church, and
on all great occasions, in a sober suit of homespun.
He has no pride of appearance, and he needs none.
He is known as the Squire, throughout the township;
and no important measure can pass the board of
select-men without the Squire's approval:—and this,
from no blind subserviency to his opinion, because his
farm is large, and he is reckoned “fore-handed,” but
because there is a confidence in his judgment.

He is jealous of none of the prerogatives of the
country parson, or of the school-master, or of the
Village doctor; and although the latter is a testy
politician of the opposite party, it does not at all
impair the Squire's faith in his calomel;—he suffers
all his Radicalism, with the same equanimity that he
suffers his rhubarb.

The day-laborers of the neighborhood, and the
small farmers consider the Squire's note of hand for
their savings, better than the best bonds of city origin;
and they seek his advice is all matters of litigation.
He is a Justice of the Peace, as the title of Squire
in a New England village implies; and many are the
country courts that you peep upon, with Frank, from
the door of the great dining room.

The defendant always seems to you, in these

important cases,—especially if his beard is rather
long,—an extraordinary ruffian; to whom Jack Sheppard
would have been a comparatively innocent boy.
You watch curiously the old gentleman, sitting in his
big arm chair, with his spectacles in their silver case
at his elbow, and his snuff box in hand, listening
attentively to some grievous complaint; you see him
ponder deeply—with a pinch of snuff to aid his judgment,—and
you listen with intense admiration, as
he gives a loud, preparatory “Ahem,” and clears away
the intricacies of the case with a sweep of that strong
practical sense, which distinguishes the New England
farmer,—getting at the very hinge of the matter,
without any consciousness of his own precision, and
satisfying the defendant by the clearness of his talk, as
much as by the leniency of his judgment.

His lands lie along those swelling hills which in
southern New England, carry the chain of the White
and Green Mountains, in gentle undulations, to the
borders of the sea. He farms some fifteen hundred
acres,—“suitably divided,” as the old school agriculturists
say, into “wood-land, pasture, and tillage.” The
farm-house, a large irregularly built mansion of wood,
stands upon a shelf of the hills looking southward,
and is shaded by century-old oaks. The barns and
out-buildings are grouped in a brown phalanx, a
little to the northward of the dwelling. Between them

a high timber gate, opens upon the scattered pasture
lands of the hills: opposite to this, and across the
farm-yard which is the lounging place of scores of red-necked
turkeys, and of matronly hens, clucking to their
callow brood, another gate of similar pretensions opens
upon the wide meadow land, which rolls with a heavy
“ground swell,” along the valley of a mountain river.
A veteran oak stands sentinel at the brown meadow-gate,
its trunk all scarred with the ruthless cuts of
new-ground axes, and the limbs garnished in summer
time, with the crooked snathes of murderous-looking
scythes.

The high-road passes a stone's throw away; but
there is little “travel” to be seen; and every chance
passer will inevitably come under the range of the
kitchen windows, and be studied carefully by the eyes
of the stout dairy-maid:—to say nothing of the
stalwart Indian cook.

This last, you cannot but admire as a type of that
noble old race, among whom your boyish fancy has
woven so many stories of romance. You wonder how
she must regard the white interlopers upon her own
soil; and you think that she tolerates the Squire's
farming privileges, with more modesty than you would
suppose. You learn, however, that she pays very
little regard to white rights,—when they conflict with
her own; and further learn, to your deep regret,

that your Princess of the old tribe, is sadly addicted
to cider drinking: and having heard her once or
twice, with a very indistinct “Goo-er night Sq-quare,”
upon her lips—your dreams about her, grow very
tame.

The Squire, like all very sensible men, has his
hobbies, and peculiarities. He has a great contempt,
for instance, for all paper money; and imagines banks
to be corporate societies, skillfully contrived for the
legal plunder of the community. He keeps a supply
of silver and gold by him, in the foot of an old
stocking; and seems to have great confidence in the
value of Spanish milled dollars. He has no kind of
patience with the new doctrines of farming. Liebig,
and all the rest, he sets down as mere theorists; and has
far more respect for the contents of his barn-yard, than
for all the guano deposits in the world. Scientific
farming, and gentleman farming, may do very well, he
says, `to keep idle young fellows from the City out of
mischief; but as for real, effective management, there's
nothing like the old stock of men, who ran barefoot
until they were ten, and who count the hard winters
by their frozen toes.' And he is fond of quoting in
this connection,—the only quotation by the by, that
the old gentleman ever makes—that couplet of Poor
Richard:—

The Squire has been in his day, connected more or
less intimately with Turn-pike enterprise, which the
rail-roads of the day have thrown sadly into the background;
and he reflects often, in a melancholy way,
upon the good old times when a man could travel in
his own carriage quietly across the country, without
being frightened with the clatter of an engine;—and
when Turn-pike stock, paid wholesome yearly dividends
of six per cent.

An almost constant hanger-on about the premises,
and a great favorite with the Squire, is a stout, middle-aged
man, with a heavy bearded face—to whom Frank
introduces you, as “Captain Dick”; and he tells you
moreover, that he is a better butcher,—a better wall
layer, and cuts a broader “swathe,” than any man
upon the farm. Beside all which, he has an immense
deal of information. He knows, in the Spring, where
all the crows' nests are to be found; he tells Frank
where the foxes burrow; he has even shot two or
three raccoons in the swamps; he knows the best
season to troll for pickerel; he has a thorough understanding
of bee-hunting; he can tell the ownership
of every stray heifer that appears upon the road:
indeed, scarce an inquiry is made, or an opinion

formed, on any of these subjects, or on such kindred
ones as the weather, or potato crop, without previous
consultation with “Captain Dick.”

You have an extraordinary respect for Captain
Dick: his gruff tones, dark beard, patched waistcoat,
and cow-hide boots, only add to it: you can
compare your regard for him, only with the sentiments
you entertain for those fabulous Roman heroes, led
on by Horatius, who cut down the bridge across
the Tiber, and then swam over to their wives and
families!

A superannuated old greyhound lives about the
premises, and stalks lazily around, thrusting his thin
nose into your hands, in a very affectionate manner.

Of course, in your way, you are a lion among
the boys of the neighborhood: a blue jacket that
you wear, with bell buttons of white metal, is their
especial wonderment. You astonish them, moreover,
with your stories of various parts of the world which
they have never visited. They tell you of the haunts
of rabbits, and great snake stories, as you sit in the
dusk after supper, under the old oaks; and you
delight them in turn, with some marvellous tale of
South American reptiles, out of Peter Parley's books.

In all this, your new friends are men of observation;
while Frank and yourself, are comparatively men of
reading. In ciphering, and all schooling, you find

yourself a long way before them; and you talk of
problems, and foreign seas, and Latin declensions, in a
way that sets them all agape.

As for the little country girls, their bare legs rather
stagger your notions of propriety; nor can you wholly
get over their outside pronunciation of some of the vowels.
Frank, however, has a little cousin,—a toddling,
wee thing, some seven years your junior, who has a rich
eye for an infant. But, alas, its color means nothing;
poor Fanny is stone blind! Your pity leans toward
her strangely, as she feels her way about the old parlor;
and her dark eyes wander over the wainscot, or over the
clear, blue sky—with the same, sad, painful vacancy.

And yet—it is very strange!—she does not grieve:
there is a sweet, soft smile upon her lip,—a smile that
will come to you in your fancied troubles of after life,
with a deep voice of reproach.

Altogether, you grow into a liking of the country:
your boyish spirit loves its fresh, bracing air, and the
sparkles of dew, that at sunrise cover the hills with
diamonds;—and the wild river, with its black-topped,
loitering pools;—and the shaggy mists that lie, in the
nights of early autumn, like unravelled clouds, lost
upon the meadow. You love the hills climbing green
and grand to the skies; or stretching away in distance,
their soft, blue, smoky caps,—like the sweet, half-faded

memories of the years behind you. You love those
oaks tossing up their broad arms into clear heaven, with
a spirit and a strength, that kindles your dawning pride
and purposes; and that makes you yearn, as you
forehead mantles with fresh blood, for a kindred spirit,
and a kindred strength. Above all, you love—though
you do not know it now—the Breadth of a country
life. In the fields of God's planting, there is Room.
No walls of brick and mortar cramp one: no factitious
distinctions mould your habit. The involuntary reaches
of the spirit, tend toward the True, and the Natural.
The flowers, the clouds, and the fresh-smelling earth, all
give width to your intent. The boy grows into
manliness, instead of growing to be like men. He
claims,—with tears almost, of brotherhood,—his kinship
with Nature; and he feels, in the mountains, his heir-ship
to the Father of Nature!

This delirium of feeling may not find expression upon
the lip of the boy; but yet it underlies his thought, and
will, without his consciousness, give the spring to his
musing dreams.

—So it is, that as you lie there upon the sunny
greensward, at the old Squire's door, you muse upon
the time when some rich lying land, with huge
granaries, and cozy old mansion sleeping under the
trees, shall be yours;—when the brooks shall water
your meadows, and come laughing down your pasture

lands;—when the clouds shall shed their spring
fragrance upon your lawns, and the daisies bless your
paths.

You will then be a Squire, with your cane, your
lean-limbed hound, your stocking-leg of specie, and
your snuff-box. You will be the happy, and respected
husband of some tidy old lady in black, and spectacles,
—a little phthisicky, like Frank's grandmother,—and
an accomplished cook of stewed pears, and Johnny
cakes!

It seems a very lofty ambition, at this stage of
growth, to reach such eminence, as to convert your
drawer in the wainscot, that has a secret spring, into a
bank for the country people; and the power to send a
man to jail, seems one of those stretches of human
prerogative, to which few of your fellow mortals can
ever hope to attain.

—Well, it may all be. And who knows but the
Dreams of Age, when they are reached, will be lighted
by the same spirit and freedom of nature, that is
around you now? Who knows, but that after tracking
you through the Spring, and the Summer of Youth,
we shall find frosted Age settling upon you heavily, and
solemnly, in the very fields where you wanton to-day?

This American life of ours is a tortuous and shifting
impulse. It brings Age back, from years of wandering,
to totter in the hamlet of its birth; and it scatters

armies of ripe manhood, to bleach far-away shores with
their bones.

That Providence, whose eye and hand are the spy
and the executioner of the Fateful changes of our life,
may bring you back in Manhood, or in Age, to this
mountain home of New England; and that very willow
yonder, which your fancy now makes the graceful
mourner of your leave, may one day shadow mournfully
your grave!

VII.
The Country Church.

THE country church is a square old building of
wood, without paint or decoration—and of that
genuine, Puritanic stamp, which is now fast giving
way to Greek porticos, and to cockney towers. It
stands upon a hill with a little church yard in its
rear, where one or two sickly looking trees keep watch
and ward over the vagrant sheep that graze among
the graves. Bramble bushes seem to thrive on the
bodies below, and there is no flower in the little yard,
save a few golden rods, which flaunt their gaudy
inodorous color under the lee of the northern wall.

New England country-livers have as yet been very
little innoculated with the sentiment of beauty; even
the door-step to the church is a wide flat stone, that

shows not a single stroke of the hammer. Within, the
simplicity is even more severe. Brown galleries run
around three sides of the old building, supported by
timbers, on which you still trace, under the stains from
the leaky roof, the deep scoring of the woodman's axe.

Below, the unpainted pews are ranged in square
forms, and by age, have gained the color of those
fragmentary wrecks of cigar boxes, which you see upon
the top shelves, in the bar-rooms of country taverns.
The minister's desk is lofty, and has once been honored
with a coating of paint;—as well as the huge sounding-board,
which, to your great amazement, protrudes from
the wall, at a very dangerous angle of inclination, over
the speaker's head. As the Squire's pew is the place
of honor, to the right of the pulpit, you have a little
tremor yourself, at sight of the heavy sounding-board,
and cannot forbear indulging in a quiet feeling of
relief, when the last prayer is said.

There are in the Squire's pew, long, faded, crimson
cushions; which, it seems to you, must date back
nearly to the commencement of the Christian era in
this country. There are also sundry old thumb-worn
copies of Dr. Dwight's Version of the Psalms of David
—`appointed to be sung in churches, by authority of
the General Association of the State of Connecticut.'
The sides of Dr. Dwight's Version are, you observe,
sadly warped, and weather-stained; and from some

stray figures which appear upon a fly-leaf, you are
constrained to think, that the Squire has sometime
employed a quiet interval of the service, with reckoning
up the contents of the old stocking-leg at home.

The parson is a stout man, remarkable in your
opinion, chiefly, for a yellowish-brown wig, a strong
nasal tone, and occasional violent thumps upon the
little, dingy, red velvet cushion, studded with brass
tacks, at the top of the desk. You do not altogether
admire his style; and by the time he has entered upon
his `Fourthly,' you give your attention, in despair, to a
new reading (it must be the twentieth) of the preface
to Dr. Dwight's Version of the Psalms.

The singing has a charm for you. There is a long,
thin-faced, flax-haired man, who carries a tuning fork in
his waistcoat pocket, and who leads the choir. His
position is in the very front rank of gallery benches,
facing the desk; and by the time the old clergyman
has read two verses of the psalm, the country chorister
turns around to his little group of aids—consisting of
the blacksmith, a carroty headed school-master, two
women in snuff-colored silks, and a girl in pink bonnet—
to announce the tune.

This being done in an authoritative manner, he lifts
his long music book,—glances again at his little company,—clears
his throat by a powerful ahem, followed
by a powerful use of a bandanna pocket-handkerchief,—

draws out his tuning fork, and waits for the parson to
close his reading. He now reviews once more his
company,—throws a reproving glance at the young
woman in the pink hat, who at the moment is biting
off a stout bunch of fennel,—lifts his music book,—
thumps upon the rail with his fork,—listens keenly,—
gives a slight ahem,—falls into the cadence,—swells into
a strong crescendo,—catches at the first word of the
line, as if he were afraid it might get away,—turns to
his company,—lifts his music book with spirit,—gives it
a powerful slap with the disengaged hand, and with a
majestic toss of the head, soars away, with half the
women below straggling on in his wake, into some such
brave, old melody as—Litchfield!

Being a visitor, and in the Squire's pew, you are
naturally an object of considerable attention to the girls
about your age; as well as to a great many fat, old
ladies in iron spectacles, who mortify you excessively, by
patting you under the chin after church; and insist upon
mistaking you for Frank; and force upon you very dry
cookies, spiced with caraway seeds.

You keep somewhat shy of the young ladies, as they
are rather stout for your notions of beauty; and wear
thick calf-skin boots. They compare very poorly with
Jenny. Jenny, you think, would be above eating
gingerbread between service. None of them, you
imagine, even read Thaddeus of Warsaw, or ever used

a colored glass seal with a heart upon it. You are
quite certain they never did, or they could not, surely,
wear such dowdy gowns, and suck their thumbs as they
do!

The farmers you have a high respect for;—particularly
for one weazen-faced old gentleman in a brown
surtout, who brings his whip into church with him, who
sings in a very strong voice, and who drives a span of
gray colts. You think, however, that he has got rather
a stout wife; and from the way he humors her in
stopping to talk with two or three other fat women,
before setting off for home, (though he seems a little
fidgetty) you naively think, that he has a high regard
for her opinion. Another townsman, who attracts your
notice, is a stout old deacon, who before entering,
always steps around the corner of the church, and puts
his hat upon the ground, to adjust his wig in a quiet
way. He then marches up the broad aisle in a stately
manner, and plants his hat, and a big pair of buckskin
mittens, on the little table under the desk. When he
is fairly seated in his corner of the pew, with his elbow
upon the top-rail—almost the only man who can
comfortably reach it,—you observe that he spreads his
brawny fingers over his scalp, in an exceedingly cautious
manner; and you innocently think again, that it is very
hypocritical in a Deacon, to be pretending to lean upon
his hand, when he is only keeping his wig straight.

After the morning service, they have an `hour's
intermission,' as the preacher calls it; during which, the
old men gather on a sunny side of the building, and
after shaking hands all around, and asking after the
`folks' at home, they enjoy a quiet talk about the
crops. One man for instance, with a twist in his nose,
would say, `it's raether a growin' season;' and another
would reply—`tolerable, but potatoes is feelin' the wet,
badly.' The stout deacon approves this opinion, and
confirms it, by blowing his nose very powerfully.

Two or three of the more worldly minded ones, will
perhaps stroll over to a neighbor's barn-yard, and take a
look at his young stock, and talk of prices, and whittle
a little; and very likely some two of them, will make a
conditional `swop' of `three likely yer'lings' for a pair
of `two-year-olds.'

The youngsters are fond of getting out into the
grave-yard, and comparing jack-knives, or talking about
the school-master, or the menagerie;—or, it may be, of
some prospective `travel' in the fall,—either to town,
or perhaps to the `sea-shore.'

Afternoon service hangs heavily; and the tall chorister
is by no means so blithe, or so majestic in the toss
of his head, as in the morning. A boy in the next box,
tries to provoke you into familiarity by dropping pellets
of gingerbread through the bars of the pew; but as

you are not accustomed to that way of making
acquaintance, you decline all overtures.

After the service is finished, the wagons that have
been disposed on either side of the road, are drawn up
before the door. The old Squire meantime, is sure to
have a little chat with the parson before he leaves; in
the course of which, the parson takes occasion to say
that his wife is a little ailing—`a slight touch,' he
thinks, `of the rheumatiz.' One of the children too,
has been troubled with the `summer complaint' for a day
or two; but he thinks that a dose of catnip, under
Providence, will effect a cure. The younger, and
unmarried men, with red wagons, flaming upon bright,
yellow wheels, make great efforts to drive off in the van;
and they spin frightfully near some of the fat, sour-faced
women, who remark in a quiet, but not very Christian
tone, that `they fear the elder's sermon hasn't done the
young bucks much good.' It is much to be feared, in
truth, that it has not.

In ten minutes the old church is thoroughly deserted;
the neighbor who keeps the key has locked up for
another week, the creaking door; and nothing of the
service remains within, except—Dr. Dwight's version,
—the long music books,—crumbs of gingerbread, and
refuse stalks of despoiled fennel.

And yet, under the influence of that old weather-stained
temple, are perhaps growing up—though you

do not once fancy it—souls, possessed of an energy, an
industry, and a respect for virtue, which will make them
stronger for the real work of life, than all the elegant
children of a city. One lesson, which even the rudest
churches of New England teach,—with all their harshness,
and all their repulsive severity of form—is the
lesson of Self-Denial. Once armed with that, and
manhood is strong. The soul that possesses the
consciousness of mastering passion, is endowed with an
element of force, that can never harmonize with
defeat. Difficulties, it wears like a summer garment,
and flings away, at the first approach of the winter of
NEED.

Let not any one suppose then, that in this detail of
the country life, through which our hero is led, I
would cast obloquy, or a sneer, upon its simplicity, or
upon its lack of refinement. Goodness, and strength,
in this world, are quite as apt to wear rough coats, as
fine ones. And the words of thorough, and self-sacrificing
kindness, are far more often dressed in the
uncouth sounds of retired life, than in the polished
utterance of the town. Heaven has not made warm
hearts, and honest hearts distinguishable by the quality
of the covering. True diamonds need no work of the
artificer to reflect, and multiply their rays. Goodness
is more within, than without; and purity is of nearer
kin to the soul, than to the body.

—And, Clarence, it may well happen, that later
in life—under the gorgeous ceilings of Venetian
churches, or at some splendid mass of Notre Dame,
with embroidered coats, and costly silks around you,—
your thoughts will run back to that little storm-beaten
church, and to the willow waving in its yard—with a
Hope that glows;—and with a tear, that you embalm!

VIII.
A Home Scene.

AND now I shall not leave this realm of boyhood,
or suffer my hero to slip away from this gala
time of his life, without a fair look at that Home where
his present pleasures lie, and where all his dreams begin
and end.

Little does the boy know, as the tide of years drifts
by, floating him out insensibly from the harbor of his
home, upon the great sea of life,—what joys, what
opportunities, what affections, are slipping from him
into the shades of that inexorable Past, where no man
can go, save on the wings of his dreams. Little does
he think—and God be praised, that the thought does
not sink deep lines in his young forehead!—as he leans
upon the lap of his mother, with his eye turned to her,

in some earnest pleading for a fancied pleasure of the
hour, or in some important story of his griefs, that such
sharing of his sorrows, and such sympathy with his
wishes, he will find no where again.

Little does he imagine, that the fond Nelly, ever
thoughtful of his pleasure, ever smiling away his griefs
—will soon be beyond the reach of either; and that the
waves of the years which come rocking so gently under
him, will soon toss her far away, upon the great swell
of life.

But now, you are there. The fire-light glimmers
upon the walls of your cherished home, like the Vestal
fire of old upon the figures of adoring virgins, or
like the flame of Hebrew sacrifice, whose incense bore
hearts to Heaven. The big chair of your father is
drawn to its wonted corner by the chimney side;
his head, just touched with gray, lies back upon its
oaken top. Little Nelly leans upon his knee, looking
up for some reply to her girlish questionings. Opposite,
sits your mother; her figure is thin, her look
cheerful, yet subdued;—her arm perhaps resting on
your shoulder, as she talks to you in tones of tender
admonition, of the days that are to come.

The cat is purring on the hearth; the clock that
ticked so plainly when Charlie died, is ticking on
the mantel still. The great table in the middle of the
room, with its books and work, waits only for the

lighting of the evening lamp, to see a return to its
stores of embroidery, and of story.

Upon a little stand under the mirror, which catches
now and then a flicker of the fire-light, and makes
it play, as if in wanton, upon the ceiling, lies that big
book, reverenced of your New England parents—the
Family Bible. It is a ponderous square volume, with
heavy silver clasps, that you have often pressed open
for a look at its quaint old pictures, or for a study of
those prettily bordered pages, which lie between the
Testaments, and which hold the Family Record.

There are the Births;—your father's, and your
mother's; it seems as if they were born a long time
ago; and even your own date of birth appears an almost
incredible distance back. Then, there are the
marriages;—only one as yet; and your mother's maiden
name looks oddly to you: it is hard to think of her as
any one else than your doting parent. You wonder if
your name will ever come under that paging; and
wonder, though you scarce whisper the wonder to yourself,
how another name would look, just below yours
—such a name for instance, as Fanny,—or as Miss
Margaret Boyne!

Last of all, come the Deaths—only one. Poor
Charlie! How it looks?—`Died 12 September 18—
Charles Henry, aged four years.' You know just how
it looks. You have turned to it often; there, you seem

to be joined to him, though only by the turning of a
leaf. And over your thoughts, as you look at that
page of the record, there sometimes wanders a vague
shadowy fear, which will come,—that your own name
may soon be there. You try to drop the notion, as if
it were not fairly your own; you affect to slight it, as
you would slight a boy who presumed on your acquaintance,
but whom you have no desire to know. It is a
common thing, you will find, with our world, to decline
familiarity with those ideas that fright us.

Yet your mother—how strange it is!—has no fears
of such dark fancies. Even now, as you stand beside
her, and as the twilight deepens in the room, her
low, silvery voice is stealing upon your ear, telling you
that she cannot be long with you;—that the time is
coming, when you must be guided by your own judgment,
and struggle with the world, unaided by the
friends of your boyhood. There is a little pride, and a
great deal more of anxiety in your thoughts now,—as
you look steadfastly into the home blaze, while those
delicate fingers, so tender of your happiness, play with
the locks upon your brow.

—To struggle with the world,—that is a proud
thing; to struggle alone,—there lies the doubt! Then,
crowds in swift, upon the calm of boyhood, the first
anxious thought of youth;—then chases over the sky of
Spring, the first heated, and wrathful cloud of Summer!

But the lamps are now lit in the little parlor, and
they shed a soft haze to the farthest corner of the
room; while the fire light streams over the floor where
puss lies purring. Little Madge is there; she has
dropped in softly with her mother, and Nelly has
welcomed her with a bound, and with a kiss. Jenny
has not so rosy a cheek as Madge. But Jenny with
her love notes, and her languishing dark eye, you think
of, as a lady; and the thought of her is a constant drain
upon your sentiment. As for Madge—that girl Madge,
whom you know so well,—you think of her as a sister;
and yet—it is very odd,—you look at her far oftener
than you do at Nelly!

Frank too has come in to have a game with you at
draughts; and he is in capital spirits, all brisk and
glowing with his evening's walk. He,—bless his honest
heart!—never observes that you arrange the board
very adroitly, so that you may keep half an eye upon
Madge, as she sits yonder beside Nelly. Nor does he
once notice your blush, as you catch her eye, when she
raises her head to fling back the ringlets; and then,
with a sly look at you, bends a most earnest gaze upon
the board, as if she were especially interested in the disposition
of the men.

You catch a little of the spirit of coquetry yourself—
(what a native growth it is!) and if she lift her eyes,
when you are gazing at her, you very suddenly divert

your look to the cat at her feet; and remark to your
friend Frank, in an easy, off-hand way—how still the
cat is lying!

And Frank turns—thinking probably, if he thinks at
all about it, that cats are very apt to lie still, when they
sleep.

As for Nelly, half neglected by your thought, as
well as by your eye, while mischievous looking Madge
is sitting by her, you little know as yet, what kindness—what
gentleness, you are careless of. Few loves
in life, and you will learn it before life is done, can
balance the lost love of a sister.

As for your parents, in the intervals of the game, you
listen dreamily to their talk with the mother of Madge
—good Mrs. Boyne. It floats over your mind, as you
rest your chin upon your clenched hand, like a strain
of old familiar music,—a household strain, that seems
to belong to the habit of your ear,—a strain that will
linger about it melodiously for many years to come,—
a strain that will be recalled long time hence, when
life is earnest and its cares heavy, with tears of regret,
and with sighs of bitterness.

By and by your game is done; and other games, in
which join Nelly (the tears come when you write her
name, now!) and Madge (the smiles come when you
look on her then.) stretch out that sweet eventide of
Home, until the lamp flickers, and you speak your friends

—adieu. To Madge, it is said boldly—a boldness put
on to conceal a little lurking tremor;—but there is
no tremor in the home good-night.

—Aye, my boy, kiss your mother—kiss her
again;—fondle your sweet Nelly;—pass your little
hand through the gray locks of your father;—love
them dearly, while you can! Make your good-nights
linger; and make your adieus long, and sweet, and
often repeated. Love with your whole soul,—Father,
Mother, and Sister;—for these loves shall die!

—Not indeed in thought:—God be thanked!—
Nor yet in tears,—for He is merciful! But they shall
die as the leaves die,—die as Spring dies into the heat,
and ripeness of Summer, and as boy-hood dies into the
elasticity and ambition of youth. Death, distance, and
time, shall each one of them dig graves for your affections;
but this you do not know, nor can know, until
the story of your life is ended.

The dreams of riches, of love, of voyage, of learning,
that light up the boy-age with splendor, will pass on
and over into the hotter dreams of youth. Spring buds
and blossoms under the glowing sun of April, nurture
at their heart those firstlings of fruit, which the heat
of summer shall ripen.

You little know,—and for this you may well thank
Heaven—that you are leaving the Spring of life, and
that you are floating fast from the shady sources of

your years, into heat, bustle, and storm. Your dreams
are now faint, flickering shadows, that play like fire-flies
in the coppices of leafy June. They have no rule, but
the rule of infantile desire. They have no joys to
promise, greater than the joys that belong to your
passing life; they have no terrors, but such terrors as
the darkness of a Spring night makes. They do not
take hold on your soul, as the dreams of youth and
manhood will do.

Your highest hope is shadowed in a cheerful, boyish
home. You wish no friends but the friends of boy-hood;—no
sister but your fond Nelly;—none to love
better than the playful Madge.

You forget, Clarence, that the Spring with you, is
the Spring with them; and that the storms of Summer
may chace wide shadows over your path, and over
their's. And you forget, that Summer is even now,
lowering with its mist, and with its scorching rays, upon
the hem of your flowery May!

—The hands of the old clock upon the mantel,
that ticked off the hours when Charlie sighed, and
when Charlie died, draw on toward midnight. The
shadows that the fire-flame makes, grow dimmer
and dimmer. And thus it is, that Home, boy-home,
passes away forever,—like the swaying of a pendulum,
—like the fading of a shadow on the floor!