in, a painful
presentiment fast arising in my heart that all would not be, as I
had left, it in the white cottage I was seeking. The two great elms
that stood bending together, as if instinct with a sense of
protection, above that dear home--where were they? My eyes searched
for them in vain.

"Where is the spring? Surely it welled up here, and this is the way
the clear stream flowed!"

Alas! the spring was dried, and scarcely a trace of its former
existence remained. The broad flat stone was broken. The shady
alcove beneath which the waters came up so cool and clear, had been
removed. All was naked and barren. Near by stood an old deserted
house. The door was half open, the windows were broken out, the
chimney had fallen, and great patches of the roof had been torn
away. Around, all was in keeping with this. The little garden was
covered with weeds, the fence that once enclosed it was broken down,
the old apple-tree that I had loved almost as tenderly as if it had
been a human creature, was no more to be seen, and in the place
where the grape-vine grew was a deep pool of green and stagnant
water.

My first impulse was to turn and flee from the place, under a
painful revulsion of feeling. But I could not leave the spot thus.
For some minutes I stood mournfully leaning on the broken garden
gate, and then forced myself to enter beneath the roof where I was
born, and where I grew up with loving and happy children, under the
sunlight of a mother's smile. If there was ruin without, there was
desolation added to ruin within, but neither ruin nor desolation
could entirely obliterate the forms so well remembered. I passed
from room to room, now pausing to recall an incident, and now
hurrying on under a sense of pain at seeing a place, hallowed in my
thoughts by the tenderest associations of my life, thus abandoned to
the gnawing tooth of decay, and destined to certain and speedy
destruction. When I came to my mother's room, emotion grew too
powerful, and a gush of tears relieved the oppressive weight that
lay upon my bosom. There I lingered long, with a kind of mournful
pleasure in this scene of my days of innocence, and lived over years
of the bygone times.

At last I turned with sad feelings from a spot which memory had held
sacred for twenty years; but which, in its change, could be sacred
no longer. Material things are called substantial; but it is not so.
Change and decay are ever at work upon them; they are unsubst