ccurs to you that even Madge may grow fat,
and wear check aprons, and snuffy-brown dresses of woollen stuff, and
twist her hair in yellow papers! Oh, no, boyhood has no such dreams as
that!

I shall leave you here in the middle of your first foray into the world
of sentiment, with those wicked blue eyes chasing rainbows over your
heart, and those little feet walking every day into your affections. I
shall leave you, before the affair has ripened into any overtures, and
while there is only a sixpence split in halves, and tied about your neck
and Maggie's neck, to bind your destinies together.

If I even hinted at any probability of your marrying her, or of your not
marrying her, you would be very likely to dispute me. One knows his own
feelings, or thinks he does, so much better than any one can tell him.

IV.

_A Friend made and Friend lost._

To visit, is a great thing in the boy calendar;--not to visit this or
that neighbor,--to drink tea, or eat strawberries, or play at
draughts,--but to go away on a visit in a coach, with a trunk, and a
great-coat, and an umbrella--this is large!

It makes no difference that they wish to be rid of your noise, now that
Charlie is sick of a fever: the reason is not at all in the way of your
pride of visiting. You are to have a long ride in a coach, and eat a
dinner at a tavern, and to see a new town almost as large as the one you
live in; and you are to make new acquaintances. In short, you are to see
the world: a very proud thing it is to see the world!

As you journey on, after bidding your friends adieu, and as you see
fences and houses to which you have not been used, you think them very
odd indeed: but it occurs to you that the geographies speak of very
various national characteristics, and you are greatly gratified with
this opportunity of verifying your study. You see new crops too, perhaps
a broad-leaved tobacco-field, which reminds you pleasantly of the
luxuriant vegetation of the tropics, spoken of by Peter Parley, and
others.

As for the houses and barns in the new town, they quite startle you with
their strangeness: you observe that some of the latter, instead of
having one stable-door have five or six,--a fact which puzzles you very
much indeed. You observe further that the houses many of them have
balustrades upon the top, which seems to you a very wonderful adaptation
to the wants of boys who wish to fly kites, or to play upon the roof.
You notice with