In the presence of your father one day you drop some hint about Madge in a very careless way,--a way shrewdly calculated to lay all suspicion,--at which your father laughs. This is odd; it makes you wonder if your father was ever in love himself. You rather think that he has been. Madge's father is dead, and her mother is poor; and you sometimes dream how--whatever your father may think or feel--you will some day make a large fortune, in some very easy way, and build a snug cottage, and have one horse for your carriage and one for your wife, (not Madge, of course--that is absurd,) and a turtleshell cat for your wife's mother, and a pretty gate to the front yard, and plenty of shrubbery; and how your wife will come dancing down the path to meet you,--as the Wife does in Mr. Irving's "Sketch-Book,"--and how she will have a harp in the parlor, and will wear white dresses with a blue sash. ----Poor Clarence, it never occurs to you that even Madge may grow fat, and wear check aprons, and snuffy-brown dresses of woollen stuff, and twist her hair in yellow papers! Oh, no, boyhood has no such dreams as that! I shall leave you here in the middle of your first foray into the world of sentiment, with those wicked blue eyes chasing rainbows over your heart, and those little feet walking every day into your affections. I shall leave you, before the affair has ripened into any overtures, and while there is only a sixpence split in halves, and tied about your neck and Maggie's neck, to bind your destinies together. If I even hinted at any probability of your marrying her, or of your not marrying her, you would be very likely to dispute me. One knows his own feelings, or thinks he does, so much better than any one can tell him. IV. _A Friend made and Friend lost._ To visit, is a great thing in the boy calendar;--not to visit this or that neighbor,--to drink tea, or eat strawberries, or play at draughts,--but to go away on a visit in a coach, with a trunk, and a great-coat, and an umbrella--this is large! It makes no difference that they wish to be rid of your noise, now that Charlie is sick of a fever: the reason is not at all in the way of your pride of visiting. You are to have a long ride in a coach, and eat a dinner at a tavern, and to see a new town almost as large as the one you live in; and you are to make new acquaintances. In short, you are to see the world: a very proud thing it is to see the world! As you journey on, after bidding your friends adieu, and as you see fences and houses to which you have not been used, you think them very odd indeed: but it occurs to you that the geographies speak of very various national characteristics, and you are greatly gratified with this opportunity of verifying your study. You see new crops too, perhaps a broad-leaved tobacco-field, which reminds you pleasantly of the luxuriant vegetation of the tropics, spoken of by Peter Parley, and others.