268 THE CKICKET IN THE WALL. 



gathered around the hearth of my home, when I was young. 

 Father, mother, brothers, sisters, playmates, and friends. 

 How quietly some of them grew old and ripe, and then 

 dropped into the grave. How quietly others stole away in 

 their youth to the home of the dead, and how the rest have 

 drifted away on the currents of life and are lost to me in the 

 mists and shadows of tune. Even the home and the hearth 

 are gone ; they 



Battled with time and slow decay,' 



until at last they were wiped out from the things that are. 

 The song of the peepers is a pleasant memory, and comes 

 welling up with a thousand cherished recollections of our 

 vanished youth. ; but the song of the cricket that made its 

 home in the jams of the great stone fire-place is pleasanter, 

 and the memories that come floating back with his remem- 

 bered lay are pleasanter still. He was always there. He 

 was not silent, like the out-door insect, through the spring 

 month and the cold of winter, piping only in sadness when 

 the still autumnal evenings close in their brightness and 

 beauty over the earth ; but he sang always, and his chir- 

 rup was heard at all seasons. In the winter the fire on the 

 hearth warmed him ; in the summer he had a cool resting 

 place, and he was cheerful and merry through all the long 

 year. And this reminds me of an anecdote of a venerable 

 minister, who passed years ago to his rest. He was a 

 Scotchman, and when preaching to his own congregation 

 at Salem, in Washington county, he indulged in broad 



