jokes all cracked, and the
laughter all laughed, and the little deacon wished the parson good-by,
and jogged happily homeward; but more than once he laughed to himself,
and said, "Bless my soul! I didn't know the parson had so much fun in
him." And long the parson sat by the glowing grate after the deacon had
left him, musing of other days, and the happy, pleasant things that were
in them; and many times he smiled, and once he laughed outright at some
remembered folly, for he said, "What a wild boy I was, and yet I meant
no wrong; and the dear old days were very happy."

Ay, ay! Parson Whitney, the dear old days were very happy, not only to
thee, but to all of us, who, following our sun, have fared westward so
long that the light of the morning shows dull through the dim haze of
memory. But happier than even the old days will be the young ones, I
ween, when, following still westward, we suddenly come to the gates of
the new east and the morning once more; and there, in the dawn of a day
which is cloudless and endless, we find our lost youth and its loves, to
lose them and it no more forever, thank God!

THE LEAF OF RED ROSE.

THE LEAF OF RED ROSE:

THE OLD TRAPPER'S STORY.

A story? Why, yes. If Henry, there, will translate it
And put it in verse and print as he promised
To do when it happened. Will he do it? I doubt.
He dislikes to dabble with rhyme and with measure.
Says that good honest prose is the best and the sweetest
If the words be well chosen, short, Saxon, and pithy.
And that making of verse is the business of women,
Of green boys at school, and of lovers when spooning.
But try him. It may be he will. For a lesson
Is in it, and that makes it worth telling.
The woods have their secrets and sorrows and struggles
As well as the cities. You can find in the woods
Many things, if you look, beside trees, rocks, and mountains.

Jack Whitcomb he said his name was, though I doubted.
For the name on his bosom, tattooed in purple,
Didn't point quite that way. But that doesn't matter.
One name in the woods is as good as another
If a man answers to it and it's easily spoken.
So we called him Jack Whitcomb and asked nothing further.
Brave? Why, of course he was brave. Men are not cowards.
Cowards don't come to the woods. They stay in the cities,
Where policemen