aks; 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 out-of-the-way
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 your 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