THEN I meet a person from the country in the Bedlam of the streets, I am ghtway carried back to the orchards and r-fields, to meadows and running brooks. nce I hear calves bleat in their pens, and e low on the hill-side pastures. I roam in barns, thread path-streaked timber strips, catch the cheery sound of cock-crow in morning.

l objects are so suggestive. My friend es about him the scents of hay and hucklepastures, as well as hints of fresh butter cheese. In him seem to be mysteriously ad up the most delightfully homelike assoons, as in the thumbed leaves of some dear book. The low and broad roof, milk-pans gainst the wall in the sun, a row of hives he sheltered corner of the little garden, e-trees blushing with blossoms and musiwith bees, doves cooing and hens cackling at the yard, winter fires of good oak and

hickory on the hearth, - pictures like these al hang, in my thought, about my country friend like the very clothes he has on, and I feel as if I must stop him short and ask him how he left the folks at home.

When the country dweller goes about building his house, the first thing he looks for, after digging his cellar, is a door-stone. Well do his far-sighted instincts tell him how smoothly the feet of gladness and grief will wear it; what light spirits are to trip across it as they enter and what heavy burdens may be carried forth in the coming days of sorrow and separation.

The entrance to a man's house gives to the outside world much of the expression of his domestic life. He comes out on his doorstep in the moist April sunsets to listen to the chirrup of the first robin in the apple-tree, or catch the pipings of the early frogs in the marshy corner of the home lot. He gives open-handed welcomes at this point, and here he bids farewell. The eldest daughter-just married steps over it on the blithe June morning, and the dead child is lifted across in the sad afternoon of October. They all cluster upon it, at the return of the annual Thanksgiving; and in the Sunday mornings of summer they gather there, snapping off the spikes of lilac

oms while they wait for the two-horse n to drive up and carry them to meeting. ave, before now, unexpectedly come upon s of old country houses that have long lisappeared from the landscape; the walls in and mantled with weeds; no relic of imney standing; the smooth door-stone ; nettles and chokeweeds growing luxuri- in the pit; dead and drear silence broodOver the spot:-and I think that neither us at Carthage nor Gibbon at ruined Le could have felt, in their way, the grief sadder desolation. It must be a heart sed to its own self that can confront such s unstirred.

ses;

The streak of a path through the grass e well now choked and dry; the apple-trees ed, decayed, and blotched with cankering here and there a stone from the ruined r wall lying as it was thrown out; clumps white birches and alders crowding down to brink; no smoke curling above a bright th-stone; no faces eagerly pressed against dow panes; no feet of children to make e prints about the door; nothing but a ace utterly voiceless all around; - a Colim in ruins cannot move the heart like this ck of what was once a Home. None of

the fallen arches, fragmentary columns, crum bling viaducts, or deserted London bridges could possibly suggest the outlines of a sadder story. The single cat-bird, mewing in the alders then, is more eloquent than the best inspired pens of History. Nature herself laments the end of the little drama, and with leaves and vines and greenest grasses hastens to throw over decay itself an expression of pathetic beauty.

If a Home in ruins excites feelings of such sort as this, how easy to call back to life again the soul of a happiness now buried under the snows of many a winter's absence, which dwelt within walls that are still standing, and hallowed a spot to which the heart will remain loyal so long as it beats in the breast.

But thresholds are not broad, nor are people wont to tarry long upon them:- they are but for passing over. What is to be seen within, — what simple sort of life grows and ripens through the summers and winters from attic to cellar and from the front gate to the pasture bars, we will straightway go in and behold for ourselves: and on this threshold of the whole matter let me take you by the hand, gentle reader, and conduct you along.

OW little seems the gate, and how low the wall, to the one who went out but rday a Boy from home, and comes back to-day a Man! There are few illusions which the years delight to make such havoc as with these of our youth. et the fireplace is just as wide, and the den mantel as high, as when the tea-kettle to sing on the hob in the still winter afDons, and the old folks sat with the hickblaze shining straight into their faces. re may have been a revolution in the e,-lifting up the ceiling, pushing back partitions, and letting in larger windows, ut it is very pleasant to know that by the hearth the old memories are kept sound whole; that if they are driven down from twilight of the garret, from the stillness of chambers, and even out of the favorite ing-room, they retreat as by instinct to hearthstone, where they swarm once more