M'

Y father's attachment to Rochester appears in letters written after it had ceased to be his home, when his occasional Commencement visits revived the old associations, and proved the faithfulness of the hearts to whom his own had been so closely drawn. If he ever entertained a fear of being forgotten in those familiar places, his unbelief was rebuked by the greetings which always awaited him.

ANGELICA, August 19, 1857.

My visit to Rochester was right pleasant, quite contrary to my expectations. I felt as though I was going to a strange place, and where I would be regarded almost like a stranger. The thought weighed upon me all the way, and grew heavier and more painful as I drew nearer. It was a foolish notion, and my better judgment at times. condemned it, but I could not throw it off; and if the cars had passed right on through, it is odds but I should have gone with them. But Rochester was the terminus of my road. So I threw my valise, and after it myself, doggedly into a carriage, saying, “Drive me to Miss Porter's." "O yaas," replied the colored Jehu, "I knowed whar Mr. Raymond wants to go," and he grinned from ear to ear. Hello! thinks I, here's one good memory at any rate, and the change that came over the spirit of my dream, as we drove through the streets, was almost ludicrous. Everything wore so familiar and friendly a look.

Within three minutes I could almost fancy that I was returning from a week's absence to my old field of labor. Every turn in the street, every house of peculiar form or color, seemed like a characteristic feature of a nextdoor neighbor. All the faces were such as you feel you have seen forty times before, and everything seemed glad to see me. The trees bowed courteously or bent embracingly over me, and the very stones in the streets smiled upward with most unequivocal welcome. The first day and evening I divided between the Porters and Conants. You know their warm hearts. Of course I never felt a doubt of them. It was the greeting of brothers and sisters. About nine o'clock I started from the Doctor's for home, and passing the old Corinthian Hall, where Prof. Upham was holding forth on "Simplicity" as an "Element of Greatness," I thought I must drop in and say How-d'ye to the College. The Hall was, of course, packed and jammed; but I knew the secret passage, which brought me to the rear of the stage, just behind the dignitaries. They were nodding and snoozing away under the combined influences of the thermometer, oratory, and foul air, and under shelter of columns, curtains, and the "wideawake" front row, until my entrance. Presto! what a change! William Sage was the first who caught sight of me, from about the center of the platform, and sprang to his feet as if he had caught the shock of an electrical battery. "Why, John," said he, loud enough to be heard through all the region round about, "beg your pardonDoctor, how do you do?" and he stretched his great hand over the immediate sitters, and griped mine, and pulled as though he would draw me bodily over their heads. The next instant I was in a small sea of upturned faces, and hands bristled towards me from all directions like a sheaf of spears, friendly but most overcoming. Even the dignified front row felt the sensation, and one after

another turned to see what was up, and every face opened beamingly as it met mine. After the orator, Mr. Wilder got off his poem-subject, “Rochester"-a most clever thing, full of good puns and sparkling hits on persons and things that everybody knew. After the poem and the dismission came my turn. From President Anderson, with his great hot, Scotch hand and heart, down through all the grades of trustees, professors, students, and outsiders, every one took me by the hand as if I was everybody's brother. My shoulders! how they did shake! My arm ached all the next day. If ever I thought them "no great shakes" at Rochester, I did effectual penance for the thought. And seriously, I am bound to think better than ever of the good people there, and never again to doubt the goodness of their memories or the warmth of their hearts.

We are only just beginning to realize how far gone is the summer. I am startled to think that next week is my last here, and that I must plunge again into the dizzying whirl and sweaty strife from which we are now so far removed as hardly to hear the hum. The thought, however, is not altogether unwelcome. My judgment, at least, assures me that I have rested long enough, that rest is ceasing to be "recreation" and becoming stagnation; and my heart suggests some weighty conpensations for the sweet country peace and pleasures which I must prepare to leave. With what despotic power the present rules us; how we cling to the beauties that we look upon as though they were all, and refuse to be called away from the enjoyments we have in possession, as though we went from them to necessary destitution and desolalation; how slow to learn the exhaustlessness and omnipresence of our Father's love, and to live the blessed life of hope and faith, recognizing every change of place or state as a new variation in the everlasting theme of love,

and without "forgetting the things behind" (excuse me, Brother Paul, but I have done too much of that to think it wise), or wearying of the present, ever ready to bound onward into the future, as fast as we are called, nor ever doubting to find it ready to receive, enrich, and bless us. Whew! what a sentence! But the meaning is that it just strikes me that I have been rather foolish in wishing (like the boy in the story) "it were summer always," or always play-time. For will not autumn, too, bring its unspeakable and unsparable delights! and what were life without the joy of work?

Since I came back from Rochester, we have had a glorious vacation. The weather has been almost faultless, the streams have been full, a rare occurrence in midsummer; the vegetation has been thriftyand strong, and the air has had that elastic vitality that quickens the flow of blood in your veins, and that amber clearness which makes the sunlight a golden flood and the moonlight like streams of liquid silver. We have all been in excellent health, and nothing has occurred to disturb the tranquil succession of days and nights. Our existence has run on like our little fountain, in a gentle, bright, and joyous stream, ever leaping up into the sunlight with a sort of tranquil gayety, and falling back in musical driplets into the basin of cool repose, wasting itself away by unseen channels, without turbulence and without use-that is, without what the world knows as uses; without palpable, ponderable, and marketable fruits; not without such uses as there are in being and making happy, and so praising God and helping others praise Him.

You know how brief a list comprises the entire sum of our amusements. Lounging and reading, riding or driving, now and then a chat with a neighbor or a teatalk with several, a solitary ramble over the wooded hills or a social afternoon at Puckville," and the catalogue

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is ended. "What have we read?" Mighty little, I assure you. I have read two little English books which I bought for Ally, but found quite instructive and suggestive for myself. One contains a plain, matter-of-fact, but quite. clear and comprehensive description of the interior economy of Christ's Church Charity School (Lamb's and Coleridge's, you know), and the other, a spirited, dramatic picture of school-life at Rugby* under Dr. Arnold. The latter particularly interested me. It is written by a true Bull, with some faults of style, but with a redeeming element of hearty, plucky, religious devotion to whatever is noble or lovely, and a readiness not only to admire and praise, but to fight for it, with pen or fist, against all sham friends and open foes. The story, tracing the outer rather than the inner life of the boy-hero, and his moral rather than mental development, gives only occasional glimpses of "the Doctor," as he is called throughout, but such glimpses, so characteristic, and, to me at least, so suggestive, as to break me all to pieces, in mingled admiration and humiliation. May the lesson not be fruitless.

The "Romany Rye" of that queer nondescript, Geo. Borrow and the "Biography of Spencer H. Cone” complete the odd list of my own readings this vacation. To C. and the girls I have accomplished only "Nothing to Wear," and "Charlotte Brontë," and in Shakespeare only "As You Like It," to our folks and Mr. and Mrs. Niles on "Titania Bank," and "Much Ado About Nothing" to a crowd in the parlors.

This was but one of the golden vacations whose restful hours prepared him for new years of labor after he left Rochester. We look back to the Rochester days as the only time when he was not taxed beyond meas

"Tom Brown at Rugby," by Thomas Hughes.