summer evening so
full of the music of their songs? I remember how, in my boyhood, I
listened to their voices, which came up loudest, shrillest, merriest,
when twilight was spreading its grey mantle over the earth; while the
song of the birds was hushing into silence, and the coming darkness
was lulling the things of the day into repose; Oh! how merrily they
sang along the little brooklet that took its rise in a spring in the
meadow, and wended its way among the young grass, just springing into
verdure, to the beautiful lake beyond. Their song is in my ear now,
and that meadow, that beautiful lake, the tall hills on the summits of
which the departing sunlight lingered, the tall maples that clustered
in their conelike beauty around that gushing fountain, the clustered
plum trees, the giant oak, spared by the woodman's axe when the old
forest was swept away, the fields, the 'Gulf' in the hill-side, and
the beautiful creek, that came cascading down the shelving rocks, and
leaping over precipices in which the speckled trout sported: all these
are before me now--a vision of loveliness, all the more dear because
stamped upon the memory when life was young. Oh! Time! Time! the
wrecks that lie scattered in thy pathway! That little brooklet, and
the peepers, the fountain, the maples, and the meadow, are all gone.
The brave old oak was riven by the lightning. The fields have crept up
to the very summit of the hills, and even the stream that came down
from the mountain has vanished away, save when the rains, or the
melting snows send it in a freshet over the rocks where, when I was a
boy, it was cascading always. That beautiful meadow, too, is gone, and
the streets of a modern village, with blocks of houses, and stores,
and shops, occupy the place where I swung my first scythe. The old
log-house vanished years and years ago. A steamboat ploughs its way
through that beautiful lake, and the things of my boyhood are but
visions of memory, called up from the long, long past. Not one
landmark of the olden time remains. Oh! Time! Time!"

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE CRICKET IN THE WALL--THE MINISTER'S ILLUSTRATION--OLD MEMORIES.

We spent the following day in drifting quietly around the lake,
floating lazily in the little bays, under the shadow of the tall
trees, and lounging upon small islands, gathering the low-bush
whortleberries which grew in abundance upon them. We filled our tin
pails with this delicious fruit for a dessert for