Reminiscences.




Chapter I.

The Old Homestead.



Come gentle reader, let us entwine arms with Memory, and wander back
through the avenues of life to childhood's sunny dell, and as we
return more leisurely pluck the wild flowers that grow beside the
pathway, and entwine them for Memory's garland, and inhale the
fragrance of by-gone years. O, there are rich treasures garnered up
in Memory's secret chambers, enclosed in the recesses of the soul, to
spring into life at the touch of her magic wand. Here let us sit on
this mossy stone, beneath this wide spread elm, and as its waving
branches fan our feverish cheeks, fold back the dim, misty curtains of
the past, the silent past, and hold communings with the years that are
gone. Listen to the murmur of yonder rippling stream, that breaks like
far off music upon the ear, and although half a century of years
have passed since I first stood upon its margin, and listened to its
dirge-like hum, no trace of age is left upon it. The silent years that
have swept over its surface, bearing away the generations of men, have