A merry heart goes all the day,
Your sad tires at a mile-a.”
The laughing Autolicus! It was his blithesome note that first made us acquainted with Uncle Timothy!
The remembrance of boyhood is ever pleasing to the reflective mind. The duties that await us in after-life; the cares and disappointments that obstruct our future progress cast a shade over those impressions that were once interwoven with our existence. But it is only a shade; recall but one image of the distant scene, and the whole rises in all its freshness and verdure; touch but one string of this forgotten harmony, and every chord shall vibrate!
“Arma, vi-rump que cane-o!” exclaimed the Lauréat, pointing to his old schoolmaster, who was leaning over his rustic garden-gate, reading his favourite Virgil. And how cordial was their greeting! The scholar played his urchin pranks over again, and the master flourished a visionary birch. Mr. Bosky hurried us into the playground; (his little garden was still there, but it looked not so trim and gay as when he was its horticulturist!) led us into the school room, pointed out his veritable desk, notched at all corners with his initials; identified the particular peg whereon, in days of yore, hung his (too often) crownless castor; and recapitulated his boyish sports, many of the sharers of which he happily recognised in the full tide of prosperity; and not a few sinking under adverse fortune, whose prospects were once bright and cheering, and whose bosoms bounded with youth, and innocence, and joy!
“Let me die in autumn! that the withered blossoms of summer may bestrew my grave, and the mournful breeze that scatters them, sigh forth my requiem!”
These were the words of the poor widow's only son, at whose tomb, in the village church-yard, we paused in sorrowful contemplation. Its guardian angels were Love and Pity entwined in each other's arms. Uncle Timothy, after recording the name and age of him to whom it was raised, thus concluded the inscription:—
Mysterious Vision of a fitful dream!
Pilgrim of Time thro* Nature's dark sojourn!
Then cast upon Eternity's wide stream—