In those days, rail-roads were a thing which had entered into the imagination of no man as a mode of travel, and he who should have spoken of an iron horse rushing on his course, and drawing hundreds of human beings after him at a speed of 30 miles an hour, would have been considered quite as great a believer in the marvelous, as those now are, who have faith in Paine’s light. Even post-coaches were a novelty off of the great thoroughfares, and the public conveyance usual to such small places as Middlebury, was the old long-bodied stage, with its three or four seats behind the driver’s, and stowing away some ten or twelve passengers. Blessings on those old carriages, we say. It is true, their pace rarely got up to five miles an hour, and that at every five miles or so they stopped “to water,” at an expense of some fifteen minutes of time; but what of that? Minutes seem to be more valuable to travelers now, than hours were then. But what mixed feelings did not these produce in our bosom, when seated in the old stage on our route out of town for the holydays, between impatience to arrive at our journey’s end, and the airy fabrics we erected, of what we should do when we reached there. There was the best and kindest of grandmothers as impatiently waiting for the arrival which was to enable her to spoil “the boys” with indulgences, as we were to be spoiled. There was the well-remembered pony, a little less anxious we opine to be dashed around the country, than we were to dash him. Then, there was the mill-dam, where the many-colored sun-fish awaited our hook and worms, and the bathing-place below the dam, where we could venture to try our newly-acquired skill across “the hole” without danger; and the store, where gingerbread and candy, and pipes for soap-suds bubbles were bought, with those “odd quarters” which grandma so freely bestowed. Who can ever forget these early days? And the deeper he sinks into the sere and yellow leaf, the brighter do they rise up. They constitute the small portion of our lives upon which we can look back with perfect complacency; for the light shadows which once partially clouded them have long since faded away and been forgotten, and nought but the memory of the bright joyous sunshine remains.