We wish this good old custom could be revived among us, not with its grotesque maskers, but as a day for greenwood sports. We sing “Io Pæn” at the few celebrations which are vouchsafed to us in these degenerate days. Your crabbed utilitarians may talk of its uselessness, and sneer at it as a childish pastime, but who that has a soul for the beautiful in nature can fail to love this merry-making on the greensward? Give us the pure canopy of heaven for our ball-room ceiling—let us dance where the birds may carol around us and the balmy breath of flowers kiss our cheeks. Let us welcome in the blushing month with the young, and beautiful, and gay, feeling as we partake in their sports, as if old Spenser had dreamed of the fair ones around us, when he drew that immortal picture of May: “Then came faire May, the fayrest mayd on ground, Deckt all with dainties of her season’s pryde, And throwing flow’res out of her lap around: Upon two bretheren’s shoulders she did ride, The twinnes of Leda; which on either side Supported her, like to their Soveraine Queene. Lord! how all creatures laught, when her they spide, And leapt and daunc’t as they had ravisht beene! And Cupid selfe about her fluttered all in green.” Exquisite! “The fayrest mayd on ground!” Have you ever been on a May party? Then do you not remember that blue-eyed one, with the golden tresses, and that small fair hand, whom your eyes followed throughout the whole bright day, and whom you could have gone on your knees and sworn to be not only the loveliest flower of the group, but of the county, aye! for that matter, of the world? You were just nineteen then, and she was in her sixteenth spring, by our faith! You had never met before, but long ere nightfall,—what with wandering through the wood together, or plucking flowers for each other, or lifting her over the pebbly little brook clear and musical as her own pure heart—you have come to feel as if you had known each other for years. And that night you cannot sleep for thinking of her, or if toward morning you drop into a doze, you dream—oh! how sweetly—of your little partner; so sweetly that when you awake, you sigh, and close your eyes, and would give the world if you could only sleep and dream thus of her forever. And you get up and feel even melancholy, wishing all the while that every day was the first of May, and that—for why not?—your golden-haired darling was your constant partner. And that very morning you chance, mind! only chance—to have some business that takes you down the street where she resides, and you happen _so_ accidentally to meet her as she comes forth, looking to your eyes, with her snowy virgin robe, and her blooming cheek, and her neat chip bonnet wreathed around with flowers, more beautiful than ever—aye! more beautiful than you had imagined aught earthly could be, even though “Deckt all with dainties of the