ssion and curiosity by exploring all the accessible regions of the
old world. I had studied every scene that was in any way famous, or
_in_famous I might say with regard to some, if the necessity of
clambering down or up unclimbable precipices, or wading through
interminable swamps, could render them so.

With all the fatigue and hardships I had undergone my reward was
great, and had more than repaid me for the perilous dangers I had
courted and conquered. I had gazed, and dreamed, and raved by turns. I
had been melted into tears of tenderness by the perfect harmony and
loveliness of some scenes, and had been frozen into awe by the
magnificent grandeur and terrible sublimity of others. And, after
those six years of travel in foreign lands, I had returned, my brain
one endless panorama of hills, valleys and cloud-capped mountains,
earth, skies, wood and water. Not one of those gorgeous scenes,
however, had moved me as I was moved when once again I beheld my
boyhood's home--the stately mansion of my fathers. Half hidden, it
rose majestically amid the noble elms that surrounded it; there lay
the velvet-green sloping lawn in front--down which, as a boy, I had
rolled in the summer and sledded in the winter--there the wild,
night-dark ravine in the rear--fit haunt for elves and gnomes--that
terminated amid jagged rocks and tangled trees, in a rushing, roaring
brook of no mean dimensions, almost as large as many of the so-called
rivers of the mother country. Just at this point, at the turn of the
old time-worn stage-road, where the venerable, picturesque old
homestead of my sires burst thus suddenly into view, an opening in the
trees, whether by accident or design, revealed one of the very
merriest, maddest of musical water-falls, that went foaming and
tumbling its snow-white, sparkling waters over a bed of huge rocks,
and then, by a sudden wilful bend, that same loud-uttering brook was
lost to view.

As the rattling stage neared my home, my heart leaped within me, and
every fibre of it trembled with emotion. I could have hugged and
kissed each familiar sturdy old tree, looking so grand and natural. My
soul warmed and yearned toward the well remembered scene; and as I
thought upon my fond, doting mother and my loving, lovely sisters, and
my ever-indulgent father, I could have wept in the intensity of my
joy at finding myself so near them, and breathing the same free, pure,
health-giving air that had nurtured my childhood. Bu