ll ever be an oasis upon the deserts of
memory--for to her I owe some of the most pleasurable moments of my
boyhood existence. A more Christian-like spirit, a soul fraught with
greater or intenser sympathies, and a mind less selfish in its
manifestations, or imbued with more genial influences than hers, never
existed within the compass of human being. As a teacher, she was firm,
yet mild; as a neighbor, kind and obliging--in a word, her whole
demeanor was such that the heart unconsciously awakened to
affectionate regard. The dwelling of our schoolmistress was originally
built, at her request, by a benevolent farmer, with the understanding
between them that some future day should witness a transfer of
ownership, and contains but three apartments--a large room, which, in
the words of the old song, serves for "parlor, for kitchen, and hall,"
and two small chambers, but all as neat as hands can make them. Its
white front, and massive stone chimnies, were completely embowered by
a clump of superb maples, whose heavy branches twining their dark
foliage, form a delightful arbor over the very entrance, from the
first bursting forth of the tiny buds into perfect life and beauty,
until autumn comes with its garment of mourning, and the sere and
yellow leaves slowly forsake the limbs which have been their
birth-place. A thicket of damask and white roses, lilac trees, and
clusters of pale-blue clematis, with a wealth of other flowers,
luxuriate beneath, where they receive just enough of the warm and rich
sunshine that flashed through the woven shades upon them in the
morning, and of the scented dew-drops which the wind shakes from the
leaves above at nightfall, to make them the most beautiful flower-plot
in all the neighborhood. At the back, a low shed, extending the whole
length of the house, one corner projecting further than the rest, and
covering a cool spring that gushes up, quick and bright, with a sweet
impetuosity, and goes dancing merrily across the green meadow, bright
and glorious in the sunlight, but sullen in the shade. The scenery
around, too, is magnificent. Here spreads a vast and unbroken forest,
whose mighty solitudes once echoed to the whar-whoop of the savage,
and looked upon his horrid rites beneath a midnight moon, or scowling
sky; and, in the dim distance loom the granite-based mountains, like
giant pillars to the vault of heaven, from whose tempest-beaten
summits fifty centuries have looked down, unnoted and