scarcely refrain from rejoicing aloud in the beauty and the glory of
the hour. As the sun sank to his rest behind the western hills, and
the twilight began to gather in the forest and over the lake, the moon
rose over the eastern high lands, walking with a queenly step up into
the sky, casting a long line of brilliant light across the waters,
showing the shadows of the mountains in bold outline in the depths
below, and paling the stars by her brightness above. We all felt that
we were recruiting in strength so rapidly in these mountain regions,
where the air was so bracing and pure, under the influence of
exercise, simple diet, natural sleep, and the absence of the labors
and cares of business, that we were contented, notwithstanding the
monotony that began to mark our everyday proceedings.

"I have been listening," said Spalding, as we sat upon the rude
benches in front of our camp-fire, indulging in our usual season of
smoking after our meals, "to the song of the crickets in those rude
jams, and they call up sad, yet pleasant memories from the long past;
of the old log house, the quiet fire-place, the crane in the jam, the
great logs blazing upon the hearth of a cold winter evening, the house
dog sleeping quietly in the corner, and the cat nestled confidingly
between his feet. Oh! the days of old! the days of old! These crickets
call back with these memories the circle that gathered around the
hearth of my home, when I was young. Father, mother, brothers,
sisters, playmates, and friends. How quietly some of them grew old and
ripe, and then dropped into the grave. How quietly others stole away
in their youth to the home of the dead, and how the rest have drifted
away on the currents of life and are lost to me in the mists and
shadows of time. Even the home and the hearth are gone; they

'Battled with time and slow decay,'

until at last they were wiped out from the things that are. The song
of the peepers is a pleasant memory, and comes welling up with a
thousand cherished recollections of our vanished youth; but the song
of the cricket that made its home in the jams of the great stone
fire-place is pleasanter, and the memories that come floating back
with his remembered lay are pleasanter still. He was always there. He
was not silent, like the out-door insect, through the spring month and
the cold of winter, piping only in sadness when the still autumnal
evenings close in their brightness and beauty over the eart