clear sky overhead, can have no real idea of the charm that country
sights and sounds have for those whose home is in a dirty, busy,
manufacturing town--just such a town, in fact, as I lived in when I
was a boy, which is more than twenty years ago.

My father was a doctor, with a very large, if not what is called a
"genteel," practice, and we lived in a comfortable house in a broad
street. I was born and bred there; and, ever since I could remember,
the last sound that soothed my ears at night, and the first to which I
awoke in the morning, was the eternal rumbling and rattling of the
carts and carriages as they passed over the rough stones. I never
noticed if I heard them in the day-time, but at night my chief
amusement, as I lay in bed, was to guess by the sound of the wheels
what sort of vehicle was passing.

"That light sharp rattle is a cab," I thought. "What a noise it makes,
and gone in a moment! One gentleman inside, I should think. There's an
omnibus; and there, jolty-jolt, goes a light cart; that's a carriage,
by the way the horses step; and now, rumbling heavily in the distance,
and coming slowly nearer, and heavier, and louder, this can be nothing
but a brewer's dray!" And the dray came so slowly that I was asleep
before it had got safely out of hearing.

Ours was a very noisy street, but the noise made the night cheerful;
and so did the church clock near, which struck the quarters; and so
did the light of the street lamps, which came through the blind and
fell upon my little bed. We had very little light, except gaslight and
daylight, in our street; the sunshine seldom found its way to us, and,
when it did, people were so little used to it that they pulled down
the blinds for fear it should hurt the carpets. In the room my sister