The Halicti : the Portress 



bring the finest clusters within my reach. I 

 soon fill my pockets. Moving backwards, 

 still straddling my branch, I recover terra 

 firrua. O wondrous days of litheness and as- 

 surance, when for a few filberts on a perilous 

 perch we braved the abyss ! 



Enough. These reminiscences, so dear to 

 my dreams, leave the reader indifferent. Why 

 stir up others? I am content to have brought 

 this fact into prominence: the first glimmers 

 of light penetrating into the dark chambers 

 of the mind leave an indelible impression, 

 which the years make fresher instead of dim- 

 mer. 



Obscured by everyday worries, the present 

 is much less familiar to us, in its petty details, 

 than the past, with childhood's glow upon it. 

 I see plainly in my memory what my pren- 

 tice eyes saw; and I should never succeed in 

 reproducing with the same accuracy what I 

 saw this week. I know my village thoroughly, 

 though I quitted it so long ago; and I know 

 hardly anything of the towns to which the 

 vicissitudes of life ha\e brought me. An ex- 

 quisitely sweet link binds us to our native soil; 

 we are like the plant that has to be torn away 

 from the spot where it put out its first roots. 



397 



