In

so long as they can find believing listenersof the hardships of their early winters, as of seasons out of the reach of parallels. A good deal of it, of course, comes of the lapse of years, whose wonderful mirage imparts its own exaggeration to every object and scene. the village stores they meet on winter afternoons, and, after letting the snow melt from their heavy boots, rake over again the tough and charred knots that slumber in the embers of the past. There surely was never so cold a winter as that of eighteen hundred andever so far back; then, the post-rider had to travel on snow-shoes, and throw the mail-bags ahead of him as he went; then, the sleighing held good from before Thanksgiving till after the Governor's Fast; the roads were banked up and impassable for weeks together; the wild geese went south earlier than they were ever known to go before, and did not return till people had got almost tired of looking for them in the Spring; the squirrels were seen out upon the walls and fences but once, or twice at most, during the whole winter; and some sheep that got buried in the snow by accident, away over on a hill with a guttural Indian name, subsisted on one another's wool until they were discovered by their bleat and dug out into day again.

These stories are a sort of family heirloom; or, at best, they have root in the local soil, and help weave the sentiment of the neighborhood into a firmer social fabric. The cold snaps of December are a match for the sweltering heats of August; but people love better to rehearse the experiences of the former, just as they would rather dilate on vigorous contests they have borne a part in, than go over the scenes of a mere endurance, in which they were not permitted to strike a blow.

10

Nor too much for me: a little will answer:
A roof that lets down its low, sheltering eaves,
An old apple-tree at the end of the garden,

With a robin's nest hid in its chambers of leaves;

Some red honeysuckles in bloom on the ledges,
A carpet of grass spread in front of the door,
A great rock lying down by the bars of the pas-

ture,

What larger want we than our snug little parlor? What cosier place than our porch in the rear? We can sit in them through the sweet twilights of summer,

And keep love alive through the whole of the

year.

Could I love her the more in the grandest of mansions,

Or feel her deep trust any more in great halls? Would she seem just as dear in a hum of strange voices,

As sitting here by me within our own walls?

These closely clipped lawns, and these fanciful

vistas,

These statues, and fountains, and gate-lodges,

These swans on the ponds, in their afternoon barges,

These stables, and kennels, and everything

new:

There is nothing about them that's home-bred and simple,

As a footpath, a wicket, a rose by the wall; I would not give up even one rustic treasure, For the charm, or the cost, or the name of them all.

The meadow-brook makes me a right merry neighbor;

The quail plays his pipe through the hot after

noons;

The squirrels run over the old oak-tree branches; And whippoorwills come in the summer-night

moons.

Just over that hill are the sweet berry-pastures; This other way stretch the deep woods where

I roam;

The birds are awake in the gray of the morning; And roses look into our windows at home.

It cost but a trifle: more love than hard money; And so it will last us as long as love's store;

'Tis the heart that makes rich, or the whole life

is pauper,

And happiness gets through the smallest sized

door.

Not too much for me; no poor packhorse would

I be,

To load up with riches for others to come; This world is compressed in the smallest of meas

ures,

And the widest of realms is a dear little

HOME.