THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 55 



beside long stretches of green paths ; improvident fellows who sing 

 all through the livelong summer day, unmindful and heedless of 

 coming storms and winter's stern array ; and who would thin"k, 

 when looking on the painted butterfly, flashing its gaudy colors in 

 the sunlight, that a few weeks ago it was a grovelling worm, an 

 emblem of destruction, a caterpillar. How wondrous the change ; 

 how beauteous the transformation. How typical of the spirit of man, 

 who, fettered to earth in the flesh, shall one day emerge from the 

 chrysalis of death, and wing its flight to the Bowers of Eden. 



Bounding through the highest tree tops in fearless leaps, light 

 and graceful in form, with bright black eyes, and nimbleness in every 

 movement, the squirrel enlivens the scene, who, after scrutinizing 

 around some mossgrown branch for the disturber of his haunts, hies 

 away from our gaze, with a defiant chattering that seems to say, 

 "catch me if you can," to his nest in some hollow limb, where his 

 booty of acorns, chestnuts or beech nuts is stored up for winter use ; 

 and, we think, when following his nimble movements, how some of 

 our species might relieve our charitable societies of many of their 

 cares if they would only take this provident little fellow as an example. 

 But the lengthening shadows warn us to retrace our steps ere the 

 dark pall of night settles over mountain, valley, tree and stream. 

 The fogs are rising in the meadows ; a thin, white line of vapor 

 marks, with well-defined outline, the course of some stream flowing 

 through them. Long before we reach home the curtain is raised 

 that concealed the celestial host ; those fires that glow forever, and 

 yet are not quenched. There they move as they moved and shone 

 when " the morning stars sang together, and the sons of God shouted 

 for joy." It was the same blue spangled dome on high above old 

 Rome, when she rioted in all her magnificence and luxury. The 

 " Shepherds who watched their flocks by night :" the Magi, whose 

 knowledge of the heavenly host was more enlarged than any others 

 of their time, were warned to study that living page for a light to 

 guide them to the expected Messiah. The Arab, as he travelled the 

 boundless fields of sand with his trusty camel, the " ship of the 

 desert," trusted of old to those burning orbs, for they alone were his 

 chart and his compass. Beyond the grasp of poor frail man, they 

 light him from the cradle to the sepulchre. Their beams are shed 

 upon his monument, until that, too, has crumbled away, and no token 



