I have only one thing more to say before I get upon my story.  A great many sharp-eyed people, who have a horror of light reading,—­by which they mean whatever does not make mention of stocks, cottons, or moral homilies,—­will find much fault with my book for its ephemeral character.

I am sorry that I cannot gratify such:  homilies are not at all in my habit; and it does seem to me an exhausting way of disposing of a good moral, to hammer it down to a single point, so that there shall be only one chance of driving it home.  For my own part, I count it a great deal better philosophy to fuse it, and rarefy it, so that it shall spread out into every crevice of a story, and give a color and a taste, as it were, to the whole mass.

I know there are very good people, who, if they cannot lay their finger on so much doctrine set down in old-fashioned phrase, will never get an inkling of it at all.  With such people, goodness is a thing of understanding, more than of feeling, and all their morality has its action in the brain.

God forbid that I should sneer at this terrible infirmity, which Providence has seen fit to inflict; God forbid too, that I should not be grateful to the same kind Providence for bestowing upon others among his creatures a more genial apprehension of true goodness, and a hearty sympathy with every shade of human kindness.

But in all this I am not making out a case for my own correct teaching, or insinuating the propriety of my tone.  I shall leave the book, in this regard, to speak for itself; and whoever feels himself growing worse for the reading, I advise to lay it down.  It will be very harmless on the shelf, however it may be in the hand.

I shall lay no claim to the title of moralist, teacher, or romancist:  my thoughts start pleasant pictures to my mind; and in a garrulous humor I put my finger in the button-hole of my indulgent friend, and tell him some of them,—­giving him leave to quit me whenever he chooses.

Or, if a lady is my listener, let her fancy me only an honest, simple-hearted fellow, whose familiarities are so innocent that she can pardon them;—­taking her hand in his, and talking on; sometimes looking in her eyes, and then looking into the sunshine for relief; sometimes prosy with narrative, and then sharpening up my matter with a few touches of honest pathos;—­let her imagine this, I say, and we may become the most excellent friends in the world.

SPRING;

OR,

DREAMS OF BOYHOOD.

DREAMS OF BOYHOOD.

Spring.

The old chroniclers made the year begin in the season of frosts; and they have launched us upon the current of the months from the snowy banks of January.  I love better to count time from spring to spring; it seems to me far more cheerful to reckon the year by blossoms than by blight.

Bernardin de St. Pierre, in his sweet story of Virginia, makes the bloom of the cocoa-tree, or the growth of the banana, a yearly and a loved monitor of the passage of her life.  How cold and cheerless in the comparison would be the icy chronology of the North;—­So many years have I seen the lakes locked, and the foliage die!