After these wandering minstrels returned from their meetings to our home, they would sit with my father for hours in his little study, where they told each other of their visions and their hopes. Many and many a time, as I lay in my bed, I listened to their words coming through the crack with the streak of lamplight at the bottom of the door, until finally my weary eyes would close in the full glow of the brilliant rainbow they had painted from their dreams. After all, I am glad that my father and his footsore comrades dreamed their dreams. I am glad they really lived above the sordid world, in that ethereal realm which none but the blindly devoted ever see; for I know that their visions raised my father from the narrow valley, the dusty mill, the small life of commonplace, to the great broad heights where he really lived and died. And I am glad that as a youth and a little child it was given me to catch one glimpse of these exalted realms, and to feel one aspiration for the devoted life they lived; for however truly I may know that this ideal land was but a dream that would never come, however I may have clung to the valleys, the flesh-pots, and the substantial things, I am sure that some part of this feeling abides with me, and that its tender chord of sentiment and memory reaches back to that hallowed land of childhood and of youth, and still seeks to draw me toward the heights on which my father lived. I never knew that I was growing from the child to the youth; that the life and experience and even the boy of the district school was passing forever into the realm of clouds and myth. Neither can I remember when I grew from the youth to the man, nor when the first stoop came to my shoulders, the first glint of white to my hair, or the first crease upon my face. I know that I wear glasses now,—but how did my sight begin to fail, and in what one moment of all the fleeting millions that hurried past did I first need to put glasses on my eyes? How lightly and gently time lays its hand upon all who live! I can dimly remember a period when I was very small, and I can distinctly remember when I went to the Academy on the hill and began to think of maturer things if not to think maturer thoughts. I remember that I began to realize that my father was growing old; he made mistakes in names, and hesitated about those he well knew. Still, this is not a sure sign of growing years, for I find that I am doing this myself, and many times lately have determined that I must take more pains about my memory, and cultivate it rather than continue to be as careless as I have always been. And only yesterday around an accustomed table with a few choice friends, I told a long and detailed story that I was sure was very clever and exactly to the point. I had no doubt that the pleasant tale would set the table in a roar. But although all the guests were most considerate and kind and seemed to laugh with the greatest glee, still there was something in their eyes