There are many matters in the recollections of our earliest years so minute that to speak of them is only becoming to second childhood. "The soul discovers great things from casual circumstances", says Porphory. Providence provides temporary bridges through life which commonly fall to pieces after we pass over them and are forgotten. It is not so with me; one bridge remains whole and more beautified by time--that on which I return to my native town. I require no daylight or lantern for the journey. Some men can number their happy days; I more often count my happy nights, when I soothe myself to repose by recalling the sweet and tender joys of childhood. I travel the roads and pastures or wade the brook hand in hand with Launa Probana. There was no gate out of Bellingham in my childhood. Its confines I never thought to question, or to suspect that there was anything beyond. It had its own sun, moon and stars, its river, its pond, its pastures and woods as full of interests and resources and as exhilarating as any place discovered later on the map of the world. This concentration and limitation give to children experiences and illusions which color the whole subsequent life. They are implicit in that soil where we find the roots of our being. They are what make us good citizens, steadfast friends, true lovers, observers of nature, disciples of the poets. They, whose early life is diffused over too many objects, with too many opportunities, have only a temporary and incomplete hold and delight in any of the advantages of their superior fortune. What is the good of however large a circle, if it have no center?