Whoever will bring her back to her afflicted mother--"

Stop, stop, town crier! The lost is found. O, my pretty Annie, we
forgot to tell your mother of our ramble, and she is in despair, and has
sent the town crier to bellow up and down the streets, affrighting old
and young, for the loss of a little girl who has not once let go my hand!
Well, let us hasten homeward; and as we go, forget not to thank Heaven,
my Annie, that, after wandering a little way into the world, you may
return at the first summons, with an untainted and unwearied heart, and
be a happy child again. But I have gone too far astray for the town
crier to call me back.

Sweet has been the charm of childhood on my spirit, throughout my ramble
with little Annie! Say not that it has been a waste of precious moments,
an idle matter, a babble of childish talk, and a revery of childish
imaginations, about topics unworthy of a grown man's notice. Has it been
merely this? Not so; not so. They are not truly wise who would affirm
it. As the pure breath of children revives the life of aged men, so is
our moral nature revived by their free and simple thoughts, their native
feeling, their airy mirth, for little cause or none, their grief, soon
roused and soon allayed. Their influence on us is at least reciprocal
with ours on them. When our infancy is almost forgotten, and our boyhood
long departed, though it seems but as yesterday; when life settles darkly
down upon us, and we doubt whether to call ourselves young any more, then
it is good to steal away from the society of bearded men, and even of
gentler woman, and spend an hour or two with children. After drinking
from those fountains of still fresh existence, we shall return into the
crowd, as I do now, to struggle onward and do our part in life, perhaps
as fervently as ever, but, for a time, with a kinder and purer heart, and
a spirit more lightly wise. All this by thy sweet magic, dear little