and all that love you, for long years from the rain and from the cold;
you know that the hardest storms of winter will only make a little
oozing leak, that trickles down the brown stains--like tears.

You love that old garret-roof; and you nestle down under its slope with
a sense of its protecting power that no castle-walls can give to your
maturer years. Aye, your heart clings in boyhood to the roof-tree of the
old family garret with a grateful affection and an earnest confidence,
that the after-years--whatever may be their successes, or their
honors--can never re-create. Under the roof-tree of his home the boy
feels SAFE: and where in the whole realm of life, with its
bitter toils and its bitterer temptations, will he feel _safe_ again?

But this you do not know. It seems only a grand old place; and it is
capital fun to search in its corners, and drag out some bit of quaint
old furniture, with a leg broken, and lay a cushion across it, and fix
your reins upon the lion's claws of the feet, and then--gallop away! And
you offer sister Nelly a chance, if she will be good; and throw out very
patronizing words to little Charlie, who is mounted upon a much humbler
horse,--to wit, a decrepit nursery-chair,--as he of right should be,
since he is three years your junior.

I know no nobler forage-ground for a romantic, venturesome, mischievous
boy, than the garret of an old family mansion on a day of storm. It is a
perfect field of chivalry. The heavy rafters, the dashing rain, the
piles of spare mattresses to carouse upon, the big trunks to hide in,
the old white coats and hats hanging in obscure corners, like
ghosts,--are great! And it is so far away from the old lady who keeps
rule in the nursery, that there is no possible risk of a scolding for
twisting off the fringe of the rug. There is no baby in the garret to