288 
BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 
that trade, or this or that profession. Life is all mystery 
to them, yet they are not wholly dead to a sense of 
what its reality may be ; and as their years grow towards 
youth, and give hints of coming adolescence, this thought 
of the future grows into an excitement which, for a time, 
eats up the whole of life, and bears them along into all 
manner of strange dreams, and schemes, and wayward 
imaginings—the reality all the while lying beyond them, 
but revealing itself in shreds and patches, till they grow 
into the full consciousness of its serious import, and feel 
the first pressure of responsibility. 
So life passes, phase after phase, and manhood comes 
by a slow growth, and continues to ripen until we have 
so grown out of the boy-skin that we can look down upon 
it, almost doubting that it was ever ours; until a flood 
of these boyish memories encircles us, and we are once 
more assured of our beginning in the world, and rejoice 
that w r e were boys indeed. 
Lor ourselves, we would be boys ever; not in orchard¬ 
robbing, milk-churning, or pelting at the church clock; 
but in freshness of feeling—in freedom from conven¬ 
tional rules and the coldness of polished hypocrisy—in 
hearty fellowship with all we meet, and in the strong 
hope in the future; the forward-looking, earnest-striving, 
hopeful ambition to tear aside the cobwebs of prejudice 
and falsity, and enter with pride and hilarity into the 
life that lies before us. Off with your kid gloves, man, 
and pluck the blackberries. 
