than a prison to the man of the world. But the old hearthstone makes it poetry and history and beauty all the world to me, simply because there is no place like HOME. The perennial freshness with which memory clothes the family nest explains the pathos which moved our whole nation when the news flashed over the wires that the remains of John Howard Payne had been brought to the home into which he crystallized every home by those strains to whose music the heart of humanity responds in the world-wide chorus:

"Home, home, sweet, sweet home."

It took five dwelling-places to make my early home. I analyze the composite picture as I stand once more on the long porch, whose outlook was the whole length of the village street; as I walk up the locust-canopied line; as I drink from the old spring which has never within the memory of "the oldest inhabitant" failed to pour forth its cooling stream; as I walk through the front yard, with its evergreens, its quaking aspen, its silver maple, its beds of pinks, verbenas, geraniums, its roses, red and white; its vines, wrapping trellis and wall in their embrace.

"When thoughts recall the past" I find Old Dog Tray in the field of vision as I whistle for Bony and Bull and Watch and Bruiser. I would I were a boy again as I ride and drive old Suke, Bet the mother and Bet the colt; as thus Alexander was on Bucephalus; Tam O'Shanter,

"Mounted on his gray mare Meg,
Skelpit on through dub and mire,
Despising wind and rain and fire."

But Don Quixote was never on Rosinantes. A daily walk to and from the pasture field made me know when the cows came home.

In the light which crowned the home hearthstone I contemplated the movements of the world as chronicled by newspapers of the time. Tom Grayson's lively pen and George Hart's thoughtful summary in the Washington Examiner; John Bausman's graceful style in the Washington Reporter; Seth T. Hurd's witticisms in the Washington Commonwealth; the weekly compendium of events in Alexander's Express Messenger; the fund of tale and miscellany in the Saturday Evening Post; the sensible editorials and interesting résumé of the Dollar Newspaper (the weekly edition of the Philadelphia Ledger)—all contributed their part to make the boy a man of affairs in embryo.

The home library, although not colossal, has been no unimportant element of my intellectual life. Haven's illustrated "Book of Trades" gave me an insight of the various things that man's hand finds to do. Chauncey Goodrich's "History of the United States" was so frequently read that its vivid narrations of the "Battle of Saratoga," the "Treason of Benedict Arnold," the "Capture of John André," the " Desertion of Sergeant Champe," the "Death of Washington," and the "Funeral of William Henry Harrison" are indelibly imprinted on my memory.

A small collection of books (not more than twenty volumes), known as "Parley's Cabinet Library," riveted the enthusiastic interest of youth. I recall the sketches of Josephine, Mrs. Barbauld, Lady Hester

Stanhope, Hannah More, Martha Washington, and Abigail Adams, in the volume entitled "Famous Women"; of Solon, Socrates, Plato, Alcibiades, Demosthenes, Cicero, Cæsar, and Seneca, in "Famous Men of Ancient Times"; of Cromwell, Charles the First, William Penn, in "Famous Men in Modern Times"; of Zerah Colburn, Admiral Crichton, Caspar Hauser, Daniel Lambert, and John Elwes, in "Curiosities of Human Nature," along with as good a description as I ever saw of England and Englishmen, in " Manners and Customs of European Nations."

I still feel the impression of the truth in its imperishableness, its heroism and its triumph, which came to me when I grasped D'Aubigne's "History of the Reformation." A factor of my life has been the useful information, secular and religious, which I absorbed from a Sunday-school library issued by the London Religious Tract Society.

I also foraged on the literary wares of my neighbors, and was very much attracted by the "Legends" of George Lippard in the work entitled "Washington and his Generals." I turned the pages of Captain Marryat's" Peter Simple" with the keen interest of a boy who was learning his first lesson in what Washington Irving called "the chivalry of the ocean." I was deeply moved by Jane Porter's touching story of "Thaddeus of Warsaw" and her tales of "The Scottish Chiefs." I took a short excursion into that thesaurus of the past known by our fathers as "Rollin's Ancient History." The summer days will never be forgotten in which I read Shakespeare and Byron. I

remember well how the literary circle in Our Village Home was stirred by the appearance of Macaulay's "History of England," Harper's Monthly Magazine, and" Uncle Tom's Cabin."

But the dear ones around the village hearthstone! Where are they now? No longer on Sunday evening do we read aloud from the Bible, each taking his or her turn, from the father to the youngest child; recite the answers of the Catechism, worship God in song, and bow to Him in prayer. No longer do we make the walls ring with music, sacred and secular, vocal and instrumental, as with the aid of the neighboring boys and girls we drummed the piano, scraped the fiddle, buzzed with the jewsharp, thundered with the bass-viol, and waked the guitar. No longer do we wait for the college vacation or for the yearly homecoming of those who had gone out from the old nest, so that the old circle may be itself again. The father, full of years and rich in the love and respect of the community, still sits at the fireside. Death, however, has made us understand the philosophy of Wordsworth's "We are Seven." No more as I turn the corner from the depot do I see MOTHER at the gate waiting to welcome me home. Dear, lovely FRANK, my companion brother, of prodigious memory, of brilliant imagination, quick intellectual perception, acute moral sense, had scarcely entered into the activities of earthly life ere he mounted to the higher life, saying: "I shall soon see greater things than you." Dear, modest, quiet WILLIE wanted us to sing because death was opening his ear to the swelling harmony of the New Jerusalem.