ability. Traces of the knife
were still here and there visible upon the trunks of the supporting
trees; and with little difficulty I could decipher some well-remembered
initials.

"Cold were the hands that carved them there."

It is, no doubt, wonderful that the human mind can retain such a mass of
recollections; yet we seem to be, in general, little aware that for one
solitary incident in our lives, preserved by memory, hundreds have been
buried in the silent charnel-house of oblivion. We peruse the past, like
a map of pleasing or melancholy recollections, and observe lines crossing
and re-crossing each other in a thousand directions; some spots are
almost blank; others faintly traced; and the rest a confused and
perplexed labyrinth. A thousand feelings that, in their day and hour,
agitated our bosoms, are now forgotten; a thousand hopes, and joys, and
apprehensions, and fears, are vanished without a trace. Schemes, which
cost us much care in their formation, and much anxiety in their
fulfilment, have glided, like the clouds of yesterday, from our
remembrance. Many a sharer of our early friendships, and of our boyish
sports, we think of no more; they are as if they had never been, till
perhaps some accidental occurrence, some words in conversation, some
object by the wayside, or some passenger in the street, attract our
notice--and then, as if awaking from a perplexing trance, a light darts
in upon our darkness; and we discover that thus some one long ago spoke;
that there something long ago happened; or that the person, who just
passed us like a vision, shared smiles with us long, long years ago, and
added a double zest to the enjoyments of our childhood.

Of our old class-fellows, of those whose days were of "a mingled yarn"
with ours, whose hearts blended in the warmest reciprocities of
friendship, whose joys, whose cares, almost whose wishes were in common,
how little do we know? how little will even the severest scrutiny enable
us to discover? Yet, at one time, we were inseparable "like Juno's
swans;" we were as brothers, nor dreamt we of ought else, in the
susceptibility of our youthful imagination, than that we were to pass
through all the future scenes of life, side by side; and, mutually
supporting and supported, lengthen out the endearments, the ties, and the
feelings of boyhood unto the extremities of existence. What a fine but a
fond dream--alas, how wide of the cruel reality! The casual relati