The ghost of a boy was at my side as I wandered among the places he knew so well.  I went to the front of the house.  There was the great rock showing its broad back in the front yard.  I used to crack nuts on that, whispered the small ghost.  I looked in at the upper window in the farther part of the house.  I looked out of that on four long changing seasons, said the ghost.  I should have liked to explore farther, but, while I was looking, one came into the small garden, or what used to be the garden, in front of the house, and I desisted from my investigation and went on my way.  The apparition that put me and my little ghost to flight had a dressing-gown on its person and a gun in its hand.  I think it was the dressing-gown, and not the gun, which drove me off.

And now here is the shop, or store, that used to be Shipman’s, after passing what I think used to be Jonathan Leavitt’s bookbindery, and here is the back road that will lead me round by the old Academy building.

Could I believe my senses when I found that it was turned into a gymnasium, and heard the low thunder of ninepin balls, and the crash of tumbling pins from those precincts?  The little ghost said, Never!  It cannot be.  But it was.  “Have they a billiard-room in the upper story?” I asked myself.  “Do the theological professors take a hand at all-fours or poker on weekdays, now and then, and read the secular columns of the ‘Boston Recorder’ on Sundays?” I was demoralized for the moment, it is plain; but now that I have recovered from the shock, I must say that the fact mentioned seems to show a great advance in common sense from the notions prevailing in my time.

I sauntered,—­we, rather, my ghost and I,—­until we came to a broken field where there was quarrying and digging going on,—­our old base-ball ground, hard by the burial-place.  There I paused; and if any thoughtful boy who loves to tread in the footsteps that another has sown with memories of the time when he was young shall follow my footsteps, I need not ask him to rest here awhile, for he will be enchained by the noble view before him.  Far to the north and west the mountains of New Hampshire lifted their summits in along encircling ridge of pale blue waves.  The day was clear, and every mound and peak traced its outline with perfect definition against the sky.  This was a sight which had more virtue and refreshment in it than any aspect of nature that I had looked upon, I am afraid I must say for years.  I have been by the seaside now and then, but the sea is constantly busy with its own affairs, running here and there, listening to what the winds have to say and getting angry with them, always indifferent, often insolent, and ready to do a mischief to those who seek its companionship.  But these still, serene, unchanging mountains,—­Monadnock, Kearsarge,—­what memories that name recalls!—­and the others, the dateless Pyramids of New England, the eternal monuments of her ancient race, around which