76 PASTORAL DAYS. 



along the lichen-covered walls, where orange-lilies gleam among the alders, 

 with now and then a blazing group of butterfly-plant or a dusty clump 

 of milk-weed. The air is laden with the nut-like odor of the everlasting 

 flowers all around us. The buzzing drum of the harvest-flv vibrates from 

 every tree, and we hear the tinkling bell and lowing of the cattle in some 

 neighboring field. Farther on, we look down from the edge of the pla- 

 teau through the length of Happy Valley, with its winding stream, its 

 barns and busy mills, its sunny homes glinting through the summer haze. 

 On the left the lofty shadowed cliff known as "Steep-rock" towers against 

 the evening sky, and again we catch the murmuring whiffs of the rush- 

 ing stream in its sweeping bend beneath the overhanging precipice. A 

 sharp turn round a jutting hill-side, and I meet a prospect that quickens 

 the heart and makes the eye grow dim. There beyond, three miles " as 

 flies the laden bee," I linger on the welcome sight, as on its hill-top fair 

 two steeples side by side betray the hidden town, my second home. 



How lightly did I appreciate the fortunate journey when, twenty sum- 

 mers ago, I followed this road for the first time, when a boy of ten years, 

 on my way to an unknown village, I looked across the landscape to the 

 little spires on that distant hill ! Little did I dream of the six years of 

 unmixed happiness and precious experience that awaited me in that little 

 Judea! I only knew that I was sadly quitting a happy home on my way 

 to "boarding-school" — a school called the Snuggery, taught by a Mr. 

 Snug, in a little village named Snug Hamlet, about twenty miles from 

 Hometown. 



There are some experiences in the life of every one which, however 

 truthful, cannot be told but to elicit the doubtful nod or the warning 

 finger of incredulity. They were such experiences as these, however, that 

 made up the sum of my early life in that happy refuge called in modern 

 parlance a " boarding-school " — a name as empty, a word as weak and 

 tame in its significance, as poverty itself ; no doubt abundantly expressive 

 in its ordinary application, but here it is a mockery and a satire. This 

 is not a " boarding-school ;" it is a household, whose memories moisten the 

 eye and stir the soul ; to which its scattered members through the fleet- 

 ing years look back as to a neglected home, with father and mother dear, 

 whom they long once more to meet as in the tenderness of boyhood 

 days ; a cherished remembrance which, like the " house upon a hill, can- 

 not be hid," but sends abroad its light unto many hearts who in those 

 early clays sought the loving shelter ; a bright star in the horizon of the 



