he
newspapers. The first is daily hammering into every man that he is a
miserable, frail, good-for-nothing being, while the last is eternally
proclaiming the perfection of the people and the virtues of
self-government."

"Perhaps too much stress ought not to be laid on either."

"The first is certainly true, under limitations that we all understand;
but as to the last, I will own I want more evidence than a newspaper
eulogy to believe it."

After all, my uncle Ro is sometimes mistaken; though candour compels me
to acknowledge that he is very often right.

CHAPTER VIII.

"I see thee still;
Remembrance, faithful to her trust,
Calls thee in beauty from the dust;
Thou comest in the morning light,
Thou 'rt with me through the gloomy night;
In dreams I meet thee as of old:
Then thy soft arms my neck enfold,
And thy sweet voice is in my ear:
In every sense to memory dear
I see thee still."

SPRAGUE.

It was just ten in the morning of the succeeding day when my uncle Ro
and myself came in sight of the old house at the Nest. I call it _old_,
for a dwelling that has stood more than half a century acquires a touch
of the venerable, in a country like America. To me it was truly old, the
building having stood there, where I then saw it, for a period more than
twice as long as that of my own existence, and was associated with all
my early ideas. From childhood I had regarded that place as my future
home, as it had been the home of my parents and grand-parents, and, in
one sense, of those who had gone before them for two generations more.
The whole of the land in sight--the rich bottoms, then waving with
grass--the side-hills, the woods, the distant mountains--the orchards,
dwellings, barns, and all the other accessaries of rural life that
appertained to the soil, were mine, and had thus become without a
single act of injustice to any human being, so far as I knew and
believed. Even the red man had been fairly bought off by Herman
Mordaunt, the patentee, and so Susquesus, the Redskin of Ravensnest, as
our old Onondago was often called, had ever admitted the fact to be. It
was natural that I should love an estate thus inherited and thus
situated. NO CIVILIZED MAN, NO MAN, INDEED, SAVAGE OR NOT, HAD EVER BEEN
THE OWNER OF THOSE BROAD ACRES, BUT THOSE WHO WERE OF MY OWN BLOOD. This
is what few besides Americans _can_ say; and when it can be said truly,
in p