ue repentance demand? Is
this less the pleasure than the duty of wealth?

With what sensations of delight I walked softly about the
grounds, taking note of every familiar tree and bush and stump. I
could have sworn that not a twig, not a blade of grass, had been
despoiled or had disappeared in the years that marked my absence.
I paused reverently under the old willow tree and affectionately
rubbed my legs, for from this tree my parents had cut the
instruments of torture for purposes of castigation, and its name,
the weeping willow, was always associated in my infant mind with
the direct results of contact with my unwilling person. On a
level with the top of the willow was the little attic room where
I slept, and the more sweetly when the crickets chirped, or the
summer rain beat upon the roof, and where the song of the birds
in the morning is the happiest music God has given to the
country. Back of the woodshed I found the remains of an old
grindstone, perhaps the same heavy crank I had so often
perspiringly and reluctantly turned. Indeed my reviving memories
were rather too generously connected with the strenuousness and
not the pleasures of youth, but I thought of the well-filled lot
in the old burying-ground on the hillside, and of those lying
there who had said: "My boy, I am doing this for your good." I
doubted it at the time, but perhaps they were right. At all
events the memories were growing pleasanter, for a stretch of
thirty-five years has many healing qualities, and our childhood
griefs are such little things in the afterglow.

In the early morning I renewed my rambles, going first to the
little frame school-house, the old church with its tall spire,
the saw-mill, the deacon's cider press, the swimming pool, and a
dozen other places of boyish adventure and misadventure. Your
true sentimentalist invariably gives the preference to scenes
over persons, and is so often rewarded by the fidelity with which
they respond to his eager expectations. It was not until I had
exhausted every incident of the place that I sought out the
companions of my school-days. What strange irony of fate is that
which sends some of us out into the restless world to grow away
from our old ideals and make others, and restrains some in the
monotonous rut of village life, to drone peacefully their little
span! But happy he, who, knowing nothing, misses nothing. If
there were any village Hampdens, or mute, inglorious Miltons
among my pl