Winding through a verdant copse, we suddenly came in sight of an elegant mansion. From a flower-woven arbour, sacred to retirement, proceeded the notes of a guitar.
"Hush!" said the Lauréat, colouring deeply,--
"breathe not! Stir not!" And a voice of surpassing sweetness sang
Was Mr. Bosky in love with the songstress or the song? Certes his manner seemed unusually hurried and flurried; and one or two of his forced whistles sounded like suppressed sighs. So absent was he that, not regarding how far we had left him in the rear, he stood for a few minutes motionless, as if waiting for echo to repeat the sound!
We thought--it might be an illusion--that a fair hand waved him a graceful recognition. At all events the spell was soon broken, for he bounded along to us like the roe, with
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!