ions which revive them come as pleasant showers to the
parched herbage when autumn's sun withers its flush, and yellows the
green of spring-time. Oh! the zest of early sports--of boyhood's
mischief; so free from selfishness, so untouched with meanness, so full
of joyous excitement, so loved for itself. Every man has been a boy;
every woman has been a girl; and all alike have felt and enjoyed the
sweets of young life; and when years and cares and tears have stolen
away the green from the soul, and the blossoms of the grave whiten
about the brow, and the unbidden sigh breaks away from the grief of the
heart, and memory startles with what was when we were young, the
contrast would be full of misery did not a lingering of the joys which
filled our frolics and our follies come to dull the edge of sorrow.

When the cravings of the mind, taught by time to be unrealizable, are
driven from hope; when the purity of youthful feelings are soiled by
contact with the world's baseness; when the world's passing interests
harden the sensibilities, and we have almost forgotten that we were
ever young, or had a youthful joy, some little story, some little
incident will startle the memory, and touch and tone the heart to the
music of its spring, and the desert waste which time has made green
again with memories which grew from bliss budding in our youth; and,
though they never come to fruitage, are cherished with a joy.

Oh! the heart, the heart--what are all its joys of youth, and all its
griefs of age? Is it that youth has no apprehensions, and we enjoy its
anticipations and its present without alloy? or does its _all_ belong
to love and joy when life and the world is new? Are these too bright,
too pure for time? and the griefs of later life the Dead Sea apples
which grow from them. And is it so with all? Is there one, whose years
have brought increase of happiness, and who has lived on without a
sorrow?

In God's economy must all experience misery, to dull the love of life,
and kindle hope for a blissful future, to steal from the heart its
cherished _here_, to yield it all in its _hereafter_. Ah! we know what
a world this is, but what a world is to come we know not. Is it not as
reasonable to believe we lived before our birth into this, as to hope
we shall live after death in another world? Is this hope the instinct
of the coming, or does it grow from the baser instinct of love for the
miserable life we have? It is easy to ask, but wh