ale beams,
Then fling them over Memory's bow'rs.

To gather all the fragments up,
The phantoms chase of other years;
Their blighted joys, their withered hopes,
Their clouds, their sunshine, and their tears.

We'll wander forth while others sleep,
Fanned gently by the night wind's sigh
And thus our midnight vigils keep,
While night's fair lamps burn bright on high.

We'll wander in the realms of thought,
That boundless space, who may define?
From which more dazzling gems are brought
Than sparkle in Golconda's mine.

Then, sister, let us linger not,
The conscious moon her lamp holds high,
And with her smiling, placid face,
Beams from the chambers of the sky.

Touched by fancy's magic spell,
We'll conjure up the things of yore;
From their cold chambers bring the dead,
And friends of former years restore.

But oh, the shadows will not stay,--
The dreamy shadows of the past;
Before the sun they'll fade away--
Their mystic visions cannot last.

Then let us leave the world of dreams
Where shapes and shadows melt away;
Bathe in salvation's cooling streams,
And soar to realms of endless day.

Reminiscences.

Chapter I.

The Old Homestead.

Come gentle reader, let us entwine arms with Memory, and wander back
through the avenues of life to childhood's sunny dell, and as we
return more leisurely pluck the wild flowers that grow beside the
pathway, and entwine them for Memory's garland, and inhale the
fragrance of by-gone years. O, there are rich treasures garnered up
in Memory's secret chambers, enclosed in the recesses of the soul, to
spring into life at the touch of her magic wand. Here let us sit on
this mossy stone, beneath this wide spread elm, and as its waving
branches fan our feverish cheeks, fold back the dim, misty curtains of
the past, the silent past, and hold communings with the years that are
gone. Listen to the murmur of yonder rippling stream, that breaks like
far off music upon the ear, and although half a century of years
have passed since I first stood upon its margin, and listened to its
dirge-like hum, no trace of age is left upon it. The silent years that
have swept over its surface, bearing away the generations of men, have
left this stream sporting and dancing on in all the freshness of youth
and beauty.

Here is the grassy knoll where we have stood tiptoe and reached our
tiny han