may gaze for hours, so merry and lifelike a scene does it present. What
a charming creative power is this, what a privilege--to be a god, and
create little worlds upon paper, and whole generations of smiling,
jovial men, women, and children half inch high, whose portraits are
carried abroad, and have the faculty of making us monsters of six feet
curious and happy in our turn. Now, who would imagine that an artist
could make anything of such a subject as this? The writer begins by
stating,--

"I love to go back to the days of my youth,
And to reckon my joys to the letter,
And to count o'er the friends that I have in the world,
Ay, and those who are gone to a better."

This brings him to the consideration of his uncle. "Of all the men
I have ever known," says he, "my uncle united the greatest degree of
cheerfulness with the sobriety of manhood. Though a man when I was a
boy, he was yet one of the most agreeable companions I ever possessed.
. . . He embarked for America, and nearly twenty years passed by before
he came back again; . . . but oh, how altered!--he was in every sense
of the word an old man, his body and mind were enfeebled, and second
childishness had come upon him. How often have I bent over him, vainly
endeavoring to recall to his memory the scenes we had shared together:
and how frequently, with an aching heart, have I gazed on his vacant and
lustreless eye, while he has amused himself in clapping his hands and
singing with a quavering voice a verse of a psalm." Alas! such are
the consequences of long residences in America, and of old age even in
uncles! Well, the point of this morality is, that the uncle one day in
the morning of life vowed that he would catch his two nephews and tie
them together, ay, and actually did so, for all the efforts the rogues