life, but upon the life of life--its innocent pleasures!

But, we loiter with the children, when we should go on with them
through the narrow lane intersecting broad, rich meadows, and shaded
by pollard willows, which form living and growing posts for the
prettiest of our northern fences, and round the turn by the old
Indian burying-ground. Now, having come to "_the plain_," they pass
the solemn precincts of the village Church, and that burying-ground
where, since the Indian left his dead with us, generations of their
successors are already lain. And now they enter the wide village
street, wide as it is, shaded and embowered by dense maples and
wide-stretching elms; and enlivened with neatly-trimmed court-yards
and flower-gardens, It was a pleasant walk, and its sweet influences
bound these young people's hearts together. We are not telling a
love-story, and do not mean to intimate that this was the beginning
of one--though we have heard of the seeds nature implants
germinating at as early a period as this, and we remember a boy of
six years old who, on being reproved by his mother for having kept
his book open at one place, and his eye fixed on it for half an
hour, replied, with touching frankness--

"Mother, I can see nothing there but Caroline Mitchell! Caroline
Mitchell!"

Little Mary Marvel had no other sentiment for Julius than his sister
had. She thought him the kindest and the best; and much as she
reverenced the village pedagogues, she thought Julius's learning
profounder than theirs, for he told them stories from the Arabian
Nights--taught them the traditions of Monument Mountain--made them
learn by heart the poetry that has immortalized them, and performed