_A Home Scene._


And now I shall not leave this realm of boyhood, or suffer my hero to
slip away from this gala-time of his life, without a fair look at that
Home where his present pleasures lie, and where all his dreams begin and
end.

Little does the boy know, as the tide of years drifts by, floating him
out insensibly from the harbor of his home upon the great sea of
life,--what joys, what opportunities, what affections, are slipping from
him into the shades of that inexorable Past, where no man can go save on
the wings of his dreams. Little does he think--and God be praised that
the thought does not sink deep lines in his young forehead!--as he leans
upon the lap of his mother, with his eye turned to her in some earnest
pleading for a fancied pleasure of the hour, or in some important story
of his griefs, that such sharing of his sorrows, and such sympathy with
his wishes, he will find nowhere again.

Little does he imagine that the fond Nelly, ever thoughtful of his
pleasure, ever smiling away his griefs, will soon be beyond the reach
of either, and that the waves of the years, which come rocking so gently
under him, will soon toss her far away upon the great swell of life.

But _now_ you are there. The firelight glimmers upon the walls of your
cherished home, like the Vestal fire of old upon the figures of adoring
virgins, or like the flame of Hebrew sacrifice, whose incense bore
hearts to Heaven. The big chair of your father is drawn to its wonted
corner by the chimney-side; his head, just touched with gray, lies back