with a watering mouth the growing
melons and blackening berries; and find sweeter than all, the melons of
health, arid berries of rural bliss.

Through wood and through opening you wander free; are now on the lake
in a birchen canoe, and again on the shore in an Indian wigwam. Your
time runs out at last, and you return to society with a lagging heart,
preferring the hale and cheery comforts of backwoods life, hard and
homely as are its labors, to a life where the multitude gather, and
Pride and Luxury rule, and Self seeks all honors, and Fashion stands a
god. Your memory remains pictorial with the waters, fields and woods
of the Waldron Settlement; your dreams are illuminated with its lights
and verdures; and its pleasant times and seasons roll their rounds in
music through your mind.

VII.

A CAPTIVE.

Another year passes over our little wood-bordered world, and summer
again smiles on the settlement. The achievements of labor are
exhibited in the progress of each new plantation, in the thrift,
comfort, and hope of each pleasant estate. A few more families have
joined the neighborhood; a few more clearings are given to the area of
civilization; a few more homes and joys. A new pledge of love is added
to the Fabens family, and a troop of blissful and tender interests
succeed.

The hanging woods flourish in full foliage. Cowslips and pond-lilies
star the green marshes. Wild strawberries, large, fragrant, and sweet,
redden all the knolls, crimson the horses' fetlocks, and cluster in the
corners of the fences. Herd's grass and clover struggle into bloom
along the trails and wagon roads in the forest; and the native grasses
grow scattering and small. Young orchards have shed their snowy
blossoms. Corn is past its first hoeing; wheat approaches the ear;
flax holds up to the light and dew the bowls of its clear blue blooms.
Silver suckers and ruby mullets still linger in the inlets and
valley-streams. The horns of the deer are in the velvet. Fallows look
clean and mellow, as if ready now for the seed. Signs of promise wave;
symbols of blessing bloom on all that gladdens the eye; and Fabens
thanks God both morning and night for the bounties of his love.

A morning of June tinges the reddening east with its first delicate
blushes, while the cold pale moon still rides on her lonely way.
Whippoorwills leave the neighboring boughs and retire to the heart of
the woodlands; and robins and bluebirds, and thr