chirped and the Cricket hummed, or the Cricket chirped and the kettle hummed, or they both chirped and both hummed, it would have taken a clearer head than yours or mine to decide with any thing like certainty. 19. But of this there is no doubt, that the kettle and the Cricket, at one and the same moment, and by some power of amalgamation best known to themselves, sent, each, his fire side song of comfort streaming into a ray of the candle that shone out through the window, and a long way down the lane. And this light, bursting on a certain person who, on the instant, approached towards it through the gloom, expressed the whole thing to him, literally in a twinkling, and cried, Welcome home, old fellow! Welcome home, my boy! XXI.-I'M GROWING OLD. JOHN G. SAXE. 1. My days pass pleasantly away, My nights are blest with sweetest sleep, I feel no symptoms of decay, I have no cause to mourn nor weep, My foes are impotent and shy, My friends are neither false nor cold; I'm growing old! 2. My growing talk of olden times, My growing love of easy shoes, 3. I'm growing fonder of my staff, I'm growing deeper in my sighs, I'm growing careless of my dress, 4. I see it in my changing taste, I see it in my growing waist, I'm growing old! 5. Ah me! my very laurels breathe 6. Thanks for the years, whose rapid flight My somber muse too sadly sings! Thanks for the gleams of golden light 99 That tint the darkness of their wings! The light that beams from out the sky, Those heavenly mansions to unfold, Where all are blest, and none may sigh, "I'm growing old! XXII. THE LONG AGO. B. F. TAYLOR. 1. Oh! a wonderful stream is the river Time, 2. How the winters are drifting like flakes of snow, And the years in the sheaf, how they come and they go 3. There's a Magical Isle up the river Time, And the Junes with the roses are straying. 4. And the name of this Isle is "the Long Ago," There are brows of beauty and bosoms of snow, 5. There are fragments of songs that nobody sings, There's a lute unswept and a harp without strings, And the garments our dead used to wear. 6. There are hands that are waved when the fairy shore By the mirage is lifted in air, And we sometimes hear through the turbulent roar Sweet voices we heard in the days gone before, When the wind down the river was fair. 7. Oh! remembered for aye be that blessed isle, And when evening glows with its beautiful smile, May the greenwood of soul be in sight. [Let the pupil carefully study the similes in this selection, and show wherein the resemblance consists.] What is compared to a river, and why? to an ocean? to an island? 5. What is meant by "songs that nobody sings"? Is this piece joyous or sad? Does it require abrupt or lengthened tones? What emotions are expressed in it? XXIII.—THINKING AND REVERIE NOT THE SAME. J. G. HOLLAND. 1. It rained yesterday; and, though it is midsummer, it is unpleasantly cool to-day. The sky is clear, with almost a steel-blue tint, and the meadows are very deeply green. The shadows among the woods are black and massive, and the whole face of nature looks painfully clean, like that of a healthy little boy who has been bathed in a chilly room with very cold water. I notice that I am sensitive to a change like this, and that my mind goes very reluctantly to its task this morning. I look out from my window, and think how delightful it would be to take a seat in the sun, down under the fence across the street. 2. It seems to me that if I could sit there awhile and get warm, I could think better and write better. Toasting in the sunlight is conducive rather to reverie than thought, or I should be inclined to try it. This reluctance to commence labor, and this looking out of the window and longing for an accession of strength or warmth or inspiration or something or other not easily named, calls back to me an experience of childhood. 3. It was summer, and I was attending school. The seats were hard, and the lessons were dry, and the walls of the school-room were very cheerless. An indulgent, sweet faced girl was my teacher; and I presume that she felt the irksomeness of the confinement quite as severely as I did. The weather was delightful, and the birds were singing every where; and the thought came to me, that if I could only stay out of doors, and lie down in the shadow of a tree, I could get my lesson. 4. I begged the privilege of trying the experiment. The kind heart that presided over the school-room could not resist my petition; so I was soon lying in the coveted shadow. I went to work very severely; but the next moment found my eyes wandering; and heart, feeling, and fancy were going up and down the earth in the most vagrant fashion. It was hopeless dissipation to sit under the tree; and discovering a huge rock on the hillside, I made my way to that, to try what virtue there might be in a shadow not produced by foliage. 5. Seated under the brow of the boulder, I again applied myself to the dim-looking text, but it had become utterly meaningless; and a musical cricket under the rock would have put me to sleep if I had permitted myself to remain. I found that neither tree nor rock would lend me help; but down in the meadow I saw the brook sparkling, and, spanning it, a little bridge where I had been accustomed to sit, hanging my feet over the water and angling for minnows. It seemed as if the bridge and the water might do something for me; and, in a few minutes, my feet were dangling from the accustomed seat. 6. There, almost under my nose, close to the bottom of the clear, cool stream, lay a huge speckled trout, fanning the sand with his slow fins, and minding nothing about me at all. What could a boy do with Colburn's First Lessons, when a living trout, as large and nearly as long as his arm, lay almost within the reach of his fingers? How long I sat there I do not know, but the tinkle of a distant bell startled me, and I startled the trout, and fish and vision faded before the terrible consciousness that I knew less of my lesson than I did when I left the school-house. |