Memory brings back the features, the kind and gentle look of that dear and indulgent parent, and the unbidden tear comes.  The last time I ever saw him was at the terminus of the railroad, on the banks of Lake Pontchartrain; he placed his aged arms about my shoulders, and, pressing me to his bosom, bid me “Farewell,” as, trembling with emotion, he continued:  “we are parting forever, my child.”  He had met misfortunes in his latter days, and was poor, but I had filled his purse with the means which smoothed his way the remnant of his life.  The prediction was but too true; in less than one year after that parting, he slept in death.

And now, when war and death have swept from me children, fortune, all, and I am old and needy, it is a consolation known only to my own bosom that I plucked the thorn from my parent’s path.

These are childish memories, and may be too puerile for record; but I am sure most of my readers will find in them something of their own childhood’s memories.  It is my memories of men and things, I am writing, and I would be faithful to them.

Boyhood’s memories crowd the after-life with half the joys its destiny demands; associations which revive them come as pleasant showers to the parched herbage when autumn’s sun withers its flush, and yellows the green of spring-time.  Oh! the zest of early sports—­of boyhood’s mischief; so free from selfishness, so untouched with meanness, so full of joyous excitement, so loved for itself.  Every man has been a boy; every woman has been a girl; and all alike have felt and enjoyed the sweets of young life; and when years and cares and tears have stolen away the green from the soul, and the blossoms of the grave whiten about the brow, and the unbidden sigh breaks away from the grief of the heart, and memory startles with what was when we were young, the contrast would be full of misery did not a lingering of the joys which filled our frolics and our follies come to dull the edge of sorrow.

When the cravings of the mind, taught by time to be unrealizable, are driven from hope; when the purity of youthful feelings are soiled by contact with the world’s baseness; when the world’s passing interests harden the sensibilities, and we have almost forgotten that we were ever young, or had a youthful joy, some little story, some little incident will startle the memory, and touch and tone the heart to the music of its spring, and the desert waste which time has made green again with memories which grew from bliss budding in our youth; and, though they never come to fruitage, are cherished with a joy.

Oh! the heart, the heart—­what are all its joys of youth, and all its griefs of age?  Is it that youth has no apprehensions, and we enjoy its anticipations and its present without alloy? or does its all belong to love and joy when life and the world is new?  Are these too bright, too pure for time? and the griefs of later life the Dead Sea apples which grow from them.  And is it so with all?  Is there one, whose years have brought increase of happiness, and who has lived on without a sorrow?