210 LAMP-LIGHT SCRIBBLIKGS 



trospections ? Is it agreeable to look upon scenes, once alive and joy- 

 ous with objects of our love, now filled with strange forms with whom 

 our souls acknowledge no acquaintance? Yet despite the damping 

 chill which this is calculated to have, we do experience a heartfelt 

 though melancholy pleasure in communing with these mute inanimate 

 objects, gifted as they are with a most eloquent tongue to speak to us 

 mournfully of other days. 'Tis sweet to linger and to muse whilst 



" Up springs at every step to claim a tear, 

 , ■ Some little friendship form'd and cherish'd here." 



College days and College friends, oh ! what unwritten volumes of 

 cherished recollections are unclasped, as by Prospero's wondrous 

 spell at the bare mention of these words ! Who does not invol- 

 untarily and unconsciously exclaim, "I would that I were again a 

 student!" Who would not ardently desire to live over those quiet 

 halcyon days spent within College walls } Man, care-burthened and 

 thought-worn, finds no sucli paradisean scenes in all his earthly 

 pilgrimage, as in those tranced moments, wlien the young heart sip- 

 ped bliss from a flower-strewn world. Then was it, that he experi- 

 enced the heiglit, and depth, and intensity of the happiness immense 

 couched in that word, (so often misused,) Friendship. Yes, friendship! 

 not such as the mercenary spirits of this sordid world bartering not 

 such as binds the guilt-ridden sonl of accomplices in crime in the iron 

 fetters of dread; not that meretricious and glittering counterfeit, whicli 

 the treacherous display oidy to deceive, percliance that they may finally 

 destroy ; but that sacred a/lbction that knits together angel hearts amid 

 their bright bowers of bliss — a communion fraught with all that is holy, 

 pure, and joyous, bearing with it the breathless perfume of its heavenly 

 origin, and rewarding its favorites with the rich fruits of unmingled de- 

 light. 'Tis only in the pure days of youthful innocence, that this beat- 

 ific boon can be enjoyed by the crime-cursed sons of earth : for its ethe- 

 rial flame finds elsewhere no vestal altar save in the young unsophisti- 

 cated lieart. How soon, amid the corruption and vices of this wicked 

 world, do these become changed from their truthfulness and constancy ! 



When we separate, it is with hearts gushing over with tenderness 

 and affection, with one long, thrilling pressure of the hand, with quiver- 

 ing lip and suffused eye, and tongue that can only stammer the inarticu- 

 late "good bye." We had fondly and repeatedly and from sincere hearts 

 vowed that time should never tarnish, nor distance sever those firm 

 bright links which years of confidence had welded. But alas for the 

 constancy of man! Business, that heartless despot, on whose blood- 

 dyed altar the human race daily oflers its hecatombs of victims, soon 



