'Well, Josh—I seen them rackets!'
'Wa'n't they almighty bright?' was the inquisitive reply.
This short colloquy had reference to a train of fire-works which were set off the evening before at the Mountain-House—long snaky trails of light, flashing in their zig-zag course through the darkness. It was beautiful to see those fiëry sentences written fitfully on the sky, fading one by one, like some Hebrew character—some Nebuchadnezzar scroll—in the dark profound, and showing, as the rocket fell and faded, that beneath the lowest deep to which it descended, there was one yet lower still, to which it swept 'plumb-down, a shower of fire.'
We presently rolled away, and were soon drawn up in front of the Hudson and the horse-boat, at the landing. The same unfortunate animals were peering forth from that aquatic vehicle; one of them dropping his hairy lip, with a melancholy expression, and the other strenuously endeavoring to remove a wisp of straw which had found a lodgment on his nose. The effort, however, was vain; his physical energies sank under the task; he gave it up, and was soon under way for the opposite shore, with his four-legged fellow traveller, and three bipeds, who were smoking segars.
It is right pleasant and joyous to see the number of juvenile patriots who are taken forth into the country, (whose glories for the first time, perhaps, are shed upon their town-addicted eyes,) on the great national holiday. To them, the flaunting honors of the landscape have a new beauty, and a joyous meaning; the sun hangs above them like a great ball of fire in the sky; the waters wear a glittering sheen; and the wide moving pulse of life beats with a universal thrill of happiness to them. I could not but note the number of urchins in the steamer, whom their 'paternal derivatives' were guiding around, and showing, to their vision at least, 'all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them.'
Well, to those who are disposed to glean philosophy from the mayhap less noticeable objects of this busy world, there are few sights more lovely than childhood. The little cherub who now sits at my knee, and tries, with tiny effort, to clutch the quill with which I am playing for you, good reader; whose capricious taste, varying from ink-stand to paper, and from that to books, and every other portable thing—all 'movables that I could tell you of'—he has in his little person those elements which constitute both the freshness of our sublunary mortality, and that glorious immortality which the mortal shall yet put on. Gazing upon his fair young brow, his peach-like cheek, and the depths of those violet eyes, I feel myself rejuvenated. That which bothered Nicodemus, is no marvel to me. I feel that I have a new existence; nor can I dispel the illusion. It is harder, indeed, to believe that he will ever be what I am, than that I am otherwise than he is now. I cannot imagine that he will ever become a pilosus adult, with harvests for the razor on that downy chin. Will those golden locks become the brown auburn? Will that forehead rise as a varied and shade-changing record of pleasure or care? Will the classic little lips, now colored as by the radiance of a ruby, ever be fitfully bitten in the glow of literary composition?—and will those sun-bright locks, which hang about his temples like the soft lining of a summer cloud, become meshes where hurried fingers shall thread themselves in play? By the mass, I cannot tell. But this I know. That which hath been, shall be: the lot of manhood, if he live, will be upon him; the charm—the obstacle—the triumphant fever—the glory, the success—the far-reaching thoughts,
——'That make them eagle wings
To pierce the unborn years.'
I might 'prattle out of reason,' and fancy what, in defiance of precedent furnished by propinquity of blood, he possibly might be; an aldermanic personage, redolent of wines and soup—goodly in visage, benevolent in act, but strict in justice. I might fancy him with a most voluminous periphery, and a laugh that shakes the diaphragm, from the imo pectore to the vast circumference of the outer man. These things may be imagined, but not believed. Yet it is with others as with ourselves: 'We know what they are, but not what they may be.' Time adds to the novel thoughts of the child, the tricks and joyance of the urchin—the glow of increasing years, the passion of the swelling heart, when experience seems to school its energies. But in the flush of young existence, I can compare a child—the pride and delight of its mother and its kindred—to nothing else on earth, of its own form or image. It is like a young and beautiful bird—heard, perhaps, for once, in the days of our juvenescence, and remembered ever after, though never seen again. Its thoughts, like the rainbow-colored messenger discoursed of in the poetic entomology of La Martine,