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to, with spoon and hunting-knife, to scoop out the flakes of honey-comb with which the hollow trunk was stored. Some of them were of old date, and a deep brown color; others were beautifully white; and the honey in their cells was almost limpid. Such of the combs as were entire were placed in camp kettles, to be conveyed to the encampment; those which had shivered in the fall were devoured upon the spot. Every stark bee-hunter was to be seen with a rich morsel in his hand, dripping about his fingers, and disappearing as rapidly as a cream tart before the holiday appetite of a schoolboy. Nor was it the bee-hunters alone that profited by the downfall of this industrious community. As if the bees would carry through the similitude of their habits with those of laborious and gainful man, I beheld numbers from rival hives, arriving on eager wing, to enrich themselves with the ruins of their neighbors. These busied themselves as eagerly and cheerfully as so many wreckers on an Indiaman that has been driven on shore; plunging into the cells of the broken honey-combs, banqueting greedily on the spoil, and then winging their way full freighted to their homes. As to the poor proprietors of the ruin, they seemed to have no heart to do any thing, not even to taste the nectar that flowed around them, but crawled backwards and forwards, in vacant desolation, as I have seen a poor fellow with his hands in his breeches pocket, whistling vacantly and despondingly about the ruins of his house that had been burnt.

It is difficult to describe the bewilderment and confusion of the bees of the bankrupt hive who had been absent at the time of the catastrophe, and who arrived from time to time, with full cargoes from abroad. At first they wheeled about in the air, in the place where the fallen tree had once reared its head, astonished at finding it all a vacuum. At length, as if comprehending their disaster, they settled down in clusters on a dry branch of a neighboring tree, from whence they seemed to contemplate the prostrate ruin, and to buzz forth doleful lamentations over the downfall of their republic.

LESSON LXV.

EXERCISES IN ARTICULATION.

Burn, burn'd, burn'dst, burns, burn'st, usurps, usurp, usurp'd, horse, harsh, burst, bursts.

Thoughts on Autumn.

ALISON..

LET the young go out, in these hours, under the descending sun of the year, into the fields of nature. Their hearts are now ardent with hope, with the hopes of fame, of honor, or of happiness; and in the long perspective which is before them, their imagination creates a world where all may be enjoyed. Let the scenes which they now may witness moderate, but not extinguish, their ambition. While they see the yearly desolation of nature, let them see it as the emblem of mortal hope; while they feel the disproportion between the powers they possess and the time they are to be employed, let them carry their ambitious eye beyond the world; and while, in these sacred solitudes, a voice in their own bosom corresponds to the voice of decaying nature, let them take that high decision which becomes those who feel themselves the inhabitants of a greater world, and who look to a being incapable of decay.

Let the busy and the active go out, and pause for a time amid the scenes which surround them, and learn the high lesson which nature teaches in the hours of its fall. They are now ardent with all the desires of mortality; and fame, and interest, and pleasure, are displaying to them their shadowy promises; and, in the vulgar race of life, many weak and many worthless passions are too naturally engendered. Let them withdraw themselves for a time from the agitations of the world; let them mark the desolation of summer, and listen to the winds of winter, which begin to murmur above their heads. It is a scene which, with all

its power, has yet no reproach. It tells them, that such is also the fate to which they must come; that the pulse of passion must one day beat low; that the illusions of time must pass; and that "the spirit must return to Him who gave it." It reminds them, with gentle voice, of that innocence in which life was begun, and for which no prosperity of vice can make any compensation; and that angel who is one day to stand upon the earth, and to swear that time shall be no more," seems now to whisper to them, amid the hollow winds of the year, what manner of men they ought to be who must meet that decisive hour.

66

There is an eventide in human life, a season when the eye becomes dim and the strength decays, and when the winter of age begins to shed upon the human head its prophetic snow. It is the season of life to which the present is most analogous; and much it becomes, and much it would profit you, to mark the instructions which the season brings. The spring and the summer of your days are gone, and with them, not only the joys they knew, but many of the friends who gave them. You have entered upon the autumn of your being, and whatever may have been the profusion of your spring, or the warm intemperance of your summer, there is yet a season of stillness and of solitude which the beneficence of Heaven affords you, in which you may meditate upon the past and the future, and prepare yourselves for the mighty change which you are soon to undergo.

If it be thus you have the wisdom to use the decaying season of nature, it brings with it consolations more valuable than all the enjoyments of former days. In the long retrospect of your journey, you have seen, every day, the shades of the evening fall, and every year, the clouds of winter gather. But you have seen also, every succeeding day, the morning arise in its brightness, and in every succeeding year, the spring return to renovate the winter of nature. is now you may understand the magnificent language of Heaven it mingles its voice with that of revelation; it

It

summons you, in these hours when the leaves fall, and the winter is gathering, to that evening study which the mercy of Heaven has provided in the book of salvation; and while the shadowy valley opens which leads to the abode of death, it speaks of that hand which can comfort and can save, and which can conduct to those "green pastures, and those still waters," where there is an eternal spring for the children of God.

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Thanksgiving.

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JOSEPH T. BUCKINGHAM.

THANKSGIVING! -There is a magic in the sound of the word, which calls up from the grave of years the shadows of departed pleasures, breathes upon them the breath of life, fills them with their original attributes, decorates them again with the freshness of reality, and bids them move before the enraptured imagination, a long and gay procession of images, reflecting the innocence of childhood, the generous affection of youth, and the fervency and faithfulness of that unsophisticated and momentary interval, which precedes the entrance on the scenes of business and bustle, of anxiety and calculation, of cold-hearted indifference, of selfish distrust, and, perhaps, of treacherous friendship and insidious hypocrisy.

First in the smiling pageant approaches the child, rich -O how rich, beyond the wealth of princes!—in the possession of its primers and playthings, wondering why all the bustle of preparation for the feast, and inquiring, with characteristic simplicity, the meaning of the unusual prodigality and ceremony which every where meet and enchant its un

accustomed eye. Next, the troop of schoolboys, with limbs all life and elasticity, and hearts all harmony and gladness, drunk with their dream of liberty and release from study; mingled with the less happy but perhaps more fortunate boys, whose lot compels them to labor for their bread, with wellstrung nerves and bodies invigorated by health and exercise, bounding, to find their homes, over fields and meadows, over brook and path, with hearts as unconcerned and steps as light as those of the roe or the young hart on the mountains of spices. The apprentice- the implements of his handicraft laid by, and the stinted portion of his daily simple subsistence forgotten, his eyes glistening with exultation and his breast heaving with the fulness of anticipation - rushes along to meet at home the anxious parent, proud of the boy's advance in a trade, that will make him independent, and the younger child, who wonders if a year can have wrought so astonishing a transformation, and almost doubts his identity.

Now approach the brother and the sister, whom a few months of separation have rendered more affectionate; the friends, whom difference of employment or variety of pursuit had partially estranged; the lovers, whose impatient hearts, though blessed with frequent and delightful intercourse, welcome the return of Thanksgiving as the day when hope and love are to find their consummation the day which is forever after to be more sacred in their calendar than all the days of the year besides. But the images too thickly throng, "too fast they crowd," for the powers of description. In the midst of the gay and glorious assembly are the father, the mother, the patriarch bowed with years, and she who has been the nurse of generations, partaking of the general joy and congratulation, nor murmuring that, while such a scene engages and employs their faculties, the wheels of time do not more rapidly bring on the promised period of translation to another and more enduring heaven. An anonymous modern writer has beautifully said "There

are

moments in existence which comprise the power

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