rd
view is ever of

"Summits soft and fair,
Clad in colors of the air,
Which to those who journey near
Barren, brown, and rough appear."

The maidens of to-day are not so beautiful as the maidens were when our
young senses could drink in their beauty; the St. Michael pears have
died out; the blight has got possession of the roses. When we married, a
white one climbed up the house-side and thrust its snowy sprays in at
the casement of the wedding-chamber. Find us such climbers now! A young
girl once on the beach, watching her father's ship slip away on the
wind, had her glance caught by a sparkle in the sand; and there lay a
treasure at her feet, a heap of crimson crystals, a mine of jewels. What
wealth! What possibilities! No more going to sea! No more watching ships
out of sight! She gathered a double-handful of the splendid cubes as
earnest, and ran back to the house with them. Such assurance having been
displayed, there was no hesitation. The man-servant followed her swift
guidance to the shore again, with shovel and sack and a train of the
whole household,--but the tide had come in, and the place was not there.
Day after day was search made for that mass of garnets, but always in
vain. It was one of those deposits that Hugh Miller somewhere speaks of,
as disclosed by one tide and hidden by another. But all her life long,
though she wore jewels and scattered gold, no gem rivalled the blood-red
lustre of that sudden sparkle in the sands; and no wealth equalled the
fabulous dreams that were born of it. It was to her as precious and
irreparable as to the poet the Lost Bower.

"I affirm that since I lost it
Never bower has seemed so fair;
Never garden-creeper crossed it,
With so deft and brave an air;
Never bird sang in the summer, as I saw and heard them there."

This light of other days is unfailingly, by its owners, carried over to
every child they meet. As if the caterpillar were in better estate than
the butterfly, each boy is seeing his best days. Yet there is not a
child in the world but is pursued by cares. His desk-mate's marbles
oppress him more than will forcemeat-balls and turtle-soup when he
becomes an alderman; there are lessons to learn, terrible threats of
telling the teacher to brave, and many a smart to suffer. Childhood is
beautiful in truth, but not therefore blest,--that is, for the little
bodiless cherubs of the canvas. It wa