There have been changes too in the home scenes; these graft age upon a man. Nelly--your sweet Nelly of childhood, your affectionate sister of youth--has grown out of the old brotherly companionship into the new dignity of a household. The fire flames and flashes upon the accustomed hearth. The father's chair is there in the wonted corner; he himself--we must call him the old man now, though his head shows few white honors--wears a calmness and a trust that light the failing eye. Nelly is not away; Nelly is a wife; and the husband yonder, as you may have dreamed,--your old friend Frank. Her eye is joyous; her kindness to you is unabated; her care for you is quicker and wiser. But yet the old unity of the household seems broken; nor can all her winning attentions bring back the feeling which lived in Spring under the garret-roof. The isolation, the unity, the integrity of manhood make a strong prop for the mind, but a weak one for the heart. Dignity can but poorly fill up that chasm of the soul which the home affections once occupied. Life's duties and honors press hard upon the bosom that once throbbed at a mother's tones, and that bounded in a mother's smiles. In such home, the strength you boast of seems a weakness; manhood leans into childish memories, and melts--as Autumn frosts yield to a soft south-wind coming from a Tropic spring. You feel in a desert, where you once felt at home,--in a bounded landscape, that was once the world! The tall sycamores have dwindled to paltry trees; the hills that were so large, and lay at such grand distance to the eye of childhood, are now near by, and have fallen away to mere rolling waves of upland. The garden-fence, that was so gigantic, is now only a simple paling; its gate that was such a cumbrous affair--reminding you of Gaza--you might easily lift from its hinges. The lofty dove-cote, which seemed to rise like a monument of art before your boyish vision, is now only a flimsy box upon a tall spar of hemlock. The garret even, with its lofty beams, its dark stains, and its obscure corners, where the white hats and coats hung ghost-like, is but a low loft darkened by age,--hung over with cobwebs, dimly lighted with foul windows,--its romping Charlie--its glee--its swing--its joy--its mystery--all gone forever. The old gallipots and retorts are not anywhere to be seen in the second-story window of the brick schoolhouse. Dr. Bidlow is no more! The trees that seemed so large, the gymnastic feats that were so extraordinary, the boy that made a snapper of his handkerchief,--have all lost their greatness and their dread. Even the springy usher, who dressed his hair with the ferule, has become the middle-aged father of five curly-headed boys, and has entered upon what once seemed the gigantic commerce of "stationery and account-books."