trace of human step departed,
Because the garden was deserted,
The blither place for me!

"Friends, blame me not! a narrow ken
Hath childhood 'twixt the sun and sward:
We draw the moral afterward--
We feel the gladness then."

E. BARRETT BROWNING.

"I remember," said Mrs. Overtheway, "old as I am, I remember
distinctly many of the unrecognized vexations, longings, and
disappointments of childhood. By unrecognized, I mean those vexations,
longings, and disappointments which could not be understood by nurses,
are not confided even to mothers, and through which, even in our
cradles, we become subject to that law of humanity which gives to
every heart its own secret bitterness to be endured alone. These are
they which sometimes outlive weightier memories, and produce life-long
impressions disproportionate to their value; but oftener, perhaps, are
washed away by the advancing tide of time--the vexations, longings,
and disappointments of the next period of our lives. These are they
which are apt to be forgotten too soon to benefit our children, and
which in the forgetting make childhood all bright to look back upon,
and foster that happy fancy that there is one division of mortal life
in which greedy desire, unfulfilled purpose, envy, sorrow, weariness
and satiety, have no part, by which every man believes himself at
least to have been happy as a child.

"My childhood, on the whole, was a very happy one. The story that I am
about to relate is only a fragment of it.

"As I look into the fire, and the hot coals shape themselves into a
thousand memories of the past, I seem to be staring with childish eyes
at a board that stares back at me out of a larch plantation, and gives
notice that 'This House is to Let.' Then, again, I seem to peep
through rusty iron gates at the house itself--an old red house, with
large windows, through which one could see the white shutters that
were always closed. To look at this house, though only with my mind's
eye, recalls the feeling of mysterious interest with which I looked at
it fifty years ago, and brings back the almost oppressive happiness of
a certain day, when Sarah, having business with the couple who kept
the empty manor, took me with her, and left me to explore the grounds
whilst she visited her friends.

"Next to a companion with that rare sympathy of mind to mind, that
exceptional coincidence of tastes, which binds some few friendships in
a c