Years of ideal joy!-life's path,

First trod, such dewy freshness hath,

'Tis rapture to begin it."

BARTON.

THE first of the holy days which followed the closing of the summer term, at the academy of one of our beautiful New England villages, was just closing in upon as happy a group of children, as ever charmed echo with the music of merry shout, or ringing laugh. The whole air seemed one continuous vibration of joyous melody, as they loitered along the way side, on their return from a juvenile party. There were three lingerers aside from the merry group; and of these, again, two loitered still farther behind; a fine, dark-eyed boy of sixteen, with a little gypsey-looking romp of a girl, who might have been two or three years

younger.

"Do you go home to-morrow, Bell?" asked the boy.

"O, yes!" she replied, shaking back the long chesnut curls from her fair shoulders, and looking up in his face, with an expression vibrating between the earnest simplicity of childhood, and the first dawn of maiden bashfulness. "O, yes! I shall go home tomorrow, and see my own dear father and mother — see them every day! only think! and Aunty and darling little Bobby - that is my bird, you know—and beautiful little Marion, white as snow! that's my pet lamband good old Bessy! that's our horse — and Cherry that was brother Charley's birdand Pruny that's puss-and Leon! that's cur good old dog! O, don't you feel very glad for me, Victor? It seems as if I should fly!" and clapping her hands quickly, the merry little creature began to dance, like a very sprite; while the starting tears shewed she was not deficient in sensibility.

"Yes, I am very glad for you, Bell-but

"Can it be pleasant to think of being forgotten, Bell?"

"Now who thought of torgetting you, Vic

-forget

tor?" replied the girl, with childlike innocence construing his inuendo. "I am sure I never did. I never will -I never could such a good, kind, dear—" She hesitated, as if with half-awakened consciousness at his eager look; and then added, but with a slightly tremulous tone, and manner; "I am sure you

have been like a cousin like a brother! And I think it would be very very WICKED to forget you. She paused; and then added, "I had a brother once

poor little Charley!" Tears gushed into her eyes; but shaking them off, lightly as dew is shaken from the rose, she asked, "but what made you think about forgetting just now, Victor, when we were all so happy?"

66

Because," he replied, hesitating, "I hardly know unless he paused, and looking earnestly in her face, added, "Indeed, Bell, I don't know,"

It

"O look yonder, Victor! see that beautiful blue flower! Get it for me; will you?" is the real Fringed Gentian ! I believe !" But she did not 'see until he had sprung eagerly from her side, that there was difficulty, if not danger, between him and the flower.

"Do not

"O, stop, Victor!" she cried. " go! and I will remember you, and love you,

Yes, I will! and added, in the most

just as well without it! longer! and better!" she beseeching tones.

He had just reached the middle of a light fence of old trees, loosely piled together, which bridged a deep and rapid stream; when turning at her anxious cries, he smiled, kissed his hand gallantly, giving at the same instant a forward spring, just in season to escape a plunge in the river; and when he reached the shore, and his loud, clear, and triumphant shout announced his safety, the fragments of the fence were seen floating down the swollen current. He soon ascended the opposite bank, plucked the fair cluster; and, waving it with an air of triumph, he said, "Nothing venture, nothing have; Miss Bella Thompson!"

"But how will you get back again?" she cried, clasping her pretty little hands, with a gesture and expression of real distress, and a touch of genuine feeling, which many older and more sentimental ladies would give worlds to command, "O, Victor! how wrong-how very wrong I was to ask you !

"And what if I should not get back? returned the boy, with secret gratification at her distress, "Who will care if I do not?"

"O, your mother and your cousin! They will hate me

"O, that is all; is it?" he returned, with more of chagrin, than gallantry.

"O, no; that is not all, Victor. I shall hate myself! I shall be forever miserable!"

Again waving his trophy, and kissing his hand, the boy disappeared among the shrubbery; and running up the stream a little way, soon found a crossing place. He was just in the act of presenting the flowers, when Thomas Stanton, Bella's cousin, entered, quite inopportunely.

"One kiss on her fair hand!" said Tom, "claim thy boon, man, as thou art worthy to win the grace of fair lady! Nay, Bell! no pouting! or, by our cousinship I'll take twenty! Why

a kiss of the hand is the smallest of all boons a lady ever granted to the faithful knight who periled life and limb in her fair service! Victor, have I to teach thee?" and, seizing the bunch of flowers, he knelt gracefully on one knee, with the hand containing them pressed against his heart, while, with the other, he was about to grasp the taper fingers of his pouting cousin ; when, much to his surprise, the hitherto quiescent hand seemed gifted with sudden energy; for it administered such a spirited box on the