crash of
tumbling pins from those precincts? The little ghost said, Never! It
cannot be. But it was. "Have they a billiard-room in the upper story?"
I asked myself. "Do the theological professors take a hand at all-fours
or poker on weekdays, now and then, and read the secular columns of the
'Boston Recorder' on Sundays?" I was demoralized for the moment, it is
plain; but now that I have recovered from the shock, I must say that the
fact mentioned seems to show a great advance in common sense from the
notions prevailing in my time.

I sauntered,--we, rather, my ghost and I,--until we came to a broken
field where there was quarrying and digging going on,--our old base-ball
ground, hard by the burial-place. There I paused; and if any thoughtful
boy who loves to tread in the footsteps that another has sown with
memories of the time when he was young shall follow my footsteps, I need
not ask him to rest here awhile, for he will be enchained by the noble
view before him. Far to the north and west the mountains of New
Hampshire lifted their summits in along encircling ridge of pale blue
waves. The day was clear, and every mound and peak traced its outline
with perfect definition against the sky. This was a sight which had more
virtue and refreshment in it than any aspect of nature that I had looked
upon, I am afraid I must say for years. I have been by the seaside now
and then, but the sea is constantly busy with its own affairs, running
here and there, listening to what the winds have to say and getting angry
with them, always indifferent, often insolent, and ready to do a mischief
to those who seek its companionship. But these still, serene, unchanging
mountains,--Monadnock, Kearsarge,--what memories that name recalls!--and
the others, the dateless Pyramids of New England, the eternal monuments
of her ancient race, around which cluster the homes of so many of her
bravest and hardiest children,--I can never look at them without feeling
that, vast and remote and awful as they are, there is a kind of inward
heat and muffled throb in their stony cores, that brings them into a
vague sort of sympathy with human hearts. It is more than a year since I
have looked on those blue mountains, and they "are to me as a feeling"
now, and have been ever since.

I had only to pass a wall and I was in the burial-ground. It was thinly
tenanted as I remember it, but now populous with the silent immigrants of
more than a whole gene