deer-stalker, as
season and weather dictated--my evenings being always devoted to the
task of schoolmaster. A curious seminary was it, too, embracing every
class from childhood to advanced age, all eager for knowledge, and all
submitting to the most patient discipline to attain it. There was much
to make me happy in that humble lot. I had the love and esteem of all
around me; there was neither a harassing doubt for the future, nor the
rich man's contumely to oppress me; my life was made up of occupations
which alternately engaged mind and body, and, above all and worth all
besides, I had a sense of duty, a feeling that I was doing that which
was useful to my fellow-men; and however great may be a man's station
in life, if it want this element, the humblest peasant that rises to his
daily toil has a nobler and a better part.

As I trace these lines, how many memories of the spot are rising before
me!--scenes I had long forgotten--faces I had ceased to remember! And
now I see the little wooden bridge--a giant tree, guarded by a single
rail, that crossed the torrent in front of our cottage; and I behold
once more the little waxen image of the Virgin over the door, in whose
glass shrine at nightfall a candle ever burned! and I hear the low hum
of the villagers' prayer as the 'Angelus' is singing, and see on every
crag or cliff the homebound hunter kneeling in his deep devotion!

Happy people, and not less good than happy! Your bold and barren
mountains have been the safeguard of your virtue and your innocence!
Long may they prove so, and long may the waves of the world's ambition
be stayed at their rocky feet!

I was beginning to forget all that I had seen of life, or, if not
forget, at least to regard it as a wild and troubled dream, when an
accident, one of those things we always regard as the merest chances,
once more opened the floodgates of memory, and sent the whole past in a
strong current through my brain.

In this mountain region the transition from winter to summer is effected
in a few days. Some hours of a scorching sun and south wind swell the
torrents with melted snow; the icebergs fall thundering from cliff and
crag, and the sporting waterfall once more dashes over the precipice.
The trees burst into leaf, and the grass springs up green and fresh from
its wintry covering; and from the dreary aspect of snow-capped hills and
leaden clouds. Nature changes to fertile plains and hills, and a sky of
almost unbro