e
tulips and hyacinths, as we passed them. I longed to stay there in that
fairy land, for they brought back all the unspeakably rapturous feelings
of my boyhood. Strange that such delight, after we become men, never
visits us except in moments brief as lightning-flashes,--and then
generally only as a memory,--not, as when we were children, in the form
of a hope! When we are boys, and sudden joy stirs our hearts, we say,
"Oh, how grand life will be!" When we are men, and are thus moved, it
is, "Ah, how bright life was!"

Ben did not pause in the hyacinth-bed with me. He was anxious to prove
the excellence of his vehicle; so he dragged me on in it, until we had
nearly reached the boundary of our grounds, where the two tall, ragged
old cedar-trees marked the extreme point of the evergreen shrubbery,
and _the_ view of the neighborhood lies before us. He stopped there and
said,--

"Ye'll mappen like to look abroad a bit, and I'se go on to the
post-office. Miss Kathleen bid me put you here fornenst the landskip,
and then leave ye. She was greatly fashed at the coompany cooming just
then. I must go, Sir."

"All right, Ben. You need not hurry."

The fresh morning wind whisked up to me and kissed my face bewitchingly,
as Ben removed his tall, burly form from the narrow opening between the
two trees, and left me alone there in the shade, with nothing between me
and the view.

That moment revealed to me the joy of all liberated prisoners. My eyes
flew over the wide earth and the broad heavens. After a sweeping view of
both in their vast unity, I began to single out particulars. There lay
the village in the lap of the hills, in summer time "bosomed high in
tufted trees," but now only half veiled by the gauze-like green of the
budding foliage. The apple orchards, still white with blossoms, and
green with wheat or early grass, extended up the hills, and encroached
upon the dense brown forests. There was the little red brick turret
which crowned the village church, and my eye rested lovingly upon it.
Not that it was anything to me; but Kate and all the women I respect
love it, or what it stands for, and through them I hope to experience
that warm love of worship, and of the places dedicated to it, which
seems native to them, and much to be desired for us. I have cared little
for such things hitherto. Their beauty and happiness are just beginning
to dawn upon me.

----"Dear Jesus, can it be?
Wait we till all things