mantels, the porch, with its broad, shallow seats, and the
green-painted, "divided" front doors, to tell the tale of what once had
been the home of so much hospitality and happiness.

So all remained painted with unfading colors on the canvas of my memory,
each object as I had known and loved it when a child. And then the child
went far away and grew to womanhood, having looked on many places and
"things of beauty," but, while forgetting much that belonged to the old
days, never forgot Locust Grove. The scent of the new locust-blossoms,
the songs of the birds, and the beauty of the lights and shadows dancing
on the river were as vivid in recollection as they had been in
actuality; and after a severe and tedious illness it seemed that no
tonic could prove so effectual as a visit to that dear old place, not
seen for years, and which I had loved so well.

There is generally experienced a vague yet bitter disappointment in
returning to a spot hallowed by associations after an absence of any
appreciable length of time. It is wellnigh impossible for the reality to
equal what has through the filtering of fancy become scarcely more than
a remembered dream.

Nothing can be as it has been;
Better, so call it, only--not the same.

And yet Locust Grove in 1884 looked almost as unchanged as though it had
shared the slumbers of the "Sleeping Beauty" since 1871. Only, a certain
potent charm had fled with the presence of the departed master. It was
now but his pictured eyes and silver hair that lit up the dimness of the
room that had been sacred to him. The books and papers covering the desk
belonged to a later and more careless generation. The microscope stood
unused under its glass case, the sketches were lovingly laid away out of
sight, and altogether a subtile change could be detected in the
atmosphere. There were things, however, about the house which perhaps
had always been there, and yet which I looked upon now with a new and
keener appreciation. The picture of Professor Morse when a child of five
or six years, standing by his father, who is clad in the quaint robes
which then distinguished a Congregationalist divine, seemed to me one
that might interest others besides myself. Also the portrait of his
mother, with pearls in her puffed and powdered hair, and her beautiful
bare arms holding the older child, Sidney (a baby in oddly-fashioned
long robes), was charming to look at because of its intrinsic beauty as
well as