a few clothes into a
small trunk, despatched a hypocritical note of regret to Miss
Rogers, caught the noon train, and was soon beyond the danger
line. Mrs. Lot, casting an apprehensive glance behind her, could
not have dreaded more fearful consequences than I, looking back
on the calamity I was evading. But as we went on and on into the
cool, quiet country, and felt the soft air stealing down from the
nearing mountains, I began to experience a lively sense of relief
and pleasure, and to wonder why I had so long delayed a visit to
my boyhood home.

I am sorry for the man whose childhood knew only the roar and
bustle and swiftly shifting scenes of the city. For him there is
no return in after years, no illusion to be renewed, no joy of
youth to be substantiated. His habitation has passed away or
yielded to the inroads of commerce, his landmarks have vanished,
and he is bewildered by the strange sights that time and trade
have put upon his memories. But time has no terrors for the
country-bred boy. The Almighty does not change the mountains and
the rivers and the great rocks that fortify the scenery, and man
is slow to push back into the far meadowlands and the hillsides,
and destroy the simple, primitive life of the fathers.

All of the joy that such a returning pilgrim might have I felt
when I left the train at the junction, and, scorning the pony
engine and combination car supplied in later years by the railway
company as a tribute to progress, set out to walk the two miles
to the village. Every foot of the country I had played over as a
boy. Here was the field where Deacon Skinner did his "hayin'";
just beyond the deacon raised his tobacco crop. That roof over
there, which I once detected as the top of Jim Pomeroy's barn,
reminded me of the day of the raisin', when I sprained my ankle
and thereby saved myself a thrashing for running away. Here was
Pickerel Pond, the scene of many miraculous draughts, and now I
crossed Peach brook which babbled along under the road just as
saucily and untiringly as if it had slept all these years and was
just awaking to fresh life. A hundred rods up the brook was the
Widow Parsons's farm, and I knew that if I went through the side
gate, cut across the barnyard, and kept down to the left, I
should find that same old stump on which Bill Howland sat the day
he caught the biggest dace ever pulled out of the quiet pool.

The sun was going down behind Si Thompson's planing mill as I
sto