Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland

Excerpt

Chapter I.

The Old Homestead.

Come gentle reader, let us entwine arms with Memory, and wander back through the avenues of life to childhood's sunny dell, and as we return more leisurely pluck the wild flowers that grow beside the pathway, and entwine them for Memory's garland, and inhale the fragrance of by-gone years. O, there are rich treasures garnered up in Memory's secret chambers, enclosed in the recesses of the soul, to spring into life at the touch of her magic wand. Here let us sit on this mossy stone, beneath this wide spread elm, and as its waving branches fan our feverish cheeks, fold back the dim, misty curtains of the past, the silent past, and hold communings with the years that are gone. Listen to the murmur of yonder rippling stream, that breaks like far off music upon the ear, and although half a century of years have passed since I first stood upon its margin, and listened to its dirge-like hum, no trace of age is left upon it. The silent years that have swept over its surface, bearing away the generations of men, have left this stream sporting and dancing on in all the freshness of youth and beauty.

Here is the grassy knoll where we have stood tiptoe and reached our tiny hands a little higher to catch the gorgeous butterfly that floated through summer air on silken wings, and then clapped them with joyous glee at our own disappointment, as it sailed higher up into the blue air.

Then came the song of the warbling bird, the hum of the mountain bee, and the rustling of the leaves as they were stirred by the gentle summer breeze,--all making sweet melody in Nature's many voiced harmonies.

Here we have sat for hours, wrapt in dreamy reverie, wondering why the long, fleecy clouds that chased each other over the sun, should cast such deep, broad shadows over so fair a landscape; little heeding that they were emblematical of the shadows that coming years would cast upon our pathway as we passed on in the journey of human life; but oh, how often has the sun of hope been dimmed by the shadows of disappointment.

But let us leave this sequestered spot and wander over other scenes familiar to childhood's years.

Beneath yon large reservoir of water that flashes in the sun beams as the summer winds heave its troubled bosom, formerly stretched out an extensive meadow, where we used to stroll for amusement; or to gather the rich, ripe strawberries that lay concealed beneath the thick, tall grass that sighed before the breeze like the bosom of the ocean, fanned by the winds of heaven. Here, too, we gathered sweet blue violets, yellow buttercups, Ladies' traces and London pride, with all the beautiful variety of simple meadow flowers, and entwined them into pretty wreaths, or fragrant boquets. But the touch of time has rested upon this spot, and his finger has left a deep impress upon it. The sloping hills that surround it remain the same. The trees bear some traces of decay, but here stand the thorn bushes that used to scatter their showers of white blossoms around us like descending snow-flakes, still filled with green leaves and small red apples, surrounded by the prickly thorns that to all appearances are the same that we grasped fifty years ago....