cceed or
to gratify a personal ambition to that effect. Thus they sympathize
with and stimulate each other. Every Georgia boy of fifty years ago,
with gray-head and tottering step now, remembers his sweetheart, for
whom he carried his hat full of peaches to school, and for whom he made
the grape-vine swing, and how at noon he swung her there.

'T is bonny May; and I to-day
Am wrinkled seventy-four,
Still I enjoy, as when a boy,
Much that has gone before.

Is it the leaves and trees, or sheaves
Of yellow, ripened grain,
Which wake to me, in memory,
My boyhood's days again?

These seem to say 't is bonny May,
As when they sweetly grew,
And gave their yield, in wood and field,
To me, when life was new.

But nought beside--ah, woe betide!--
Which grew with me is here--
The home, the hall, the mill, the all
Which young life holds so dear.

The school-house, spring, and little thing,
With eyes so bright and blue,
Who'd steal away with me and play
When school's dull hours were through,

Are memories now; and yet, oh! how
It seems but yesterday
Since I was there, with that sweet dear,
In the wild wood at play.

The hill was steep where we would leap;
The grape-vine swing hung high,
And I would throw the swing up so
That, startled, she would cry.

But though she cried, she still relied
(And seemed to have no fear)
On me to hold the swing, and told
Me "not to frighten her."

But I was wild, and she no child,
And not afraid, I deemed;
So tossed as high the swing as I
Could--when she fell and screamed.

She was not harmed; but I, alarmed,
Ran quickly to assist,
And lifted her, all pale with fear,
Within my arms, and kissed

Her pallid cheek, ere she could speak:
But I had seen, you know,
(Ah! what of this? that sight and kiss
Was fifty years ago,)

That little boot and pretty foot,
So neatly formed and small--
The swelling calf, and stifled laugh--
How I remember all!

That lovely one has long since gone,
Is dust, and only dust, now;
Yet I recall that swing and fall,
As though it had been just now.

Take these lines, reader, if you please, as an evidence of how the
memories growing out of the associations of boyhood's school-days
endure through life. This association of the sexes operates as a
restraint upon both, salutary to good conduct an