THE OLD STONE HOUSE. 



Y friend and I walked along the lane. It had 

 been used for more than a hundred years, and 

 the constant wear of the wheels, and the ever 

 washing of the rain, had made it a wide rut, the width of a 

 wagon. Little streams of water trickled in the soft earth 

 where the wheels had made their last impressions; the 

 woods skirted one side, and a straggling hedge, with some 

 large trees, and the broad open fields the other. The mes- 

 sages, the letters and the news, the tidings of war and of 

 peace that have been borne along the lane ! The limbs 

 of the trees overshadow it, the alder catkins dangle by its 

 side, and in Spring, the first little blue butterflies — those 

 blossoms with wings — flutter along it, as if they too were 

 touched by the dreams that hover with them in the lane. 



As we walked silently on, we stepped backward in 

 time, we heard the foxes barking, and the sound of the first 

 tree falling. We saw Daniel Lake hurrying to his home 

 with his deed patent of the untilled land. We saw his 

 little children, beheld them playing in the lane, and we 

 followed old Daniel to his grave, and stood mourners with 

 the family there. Just as you turn the leaves of a book 



