But, Jeremy, not to imitate the folly of this world in regard to the past, nor to affect the wisdom of the next, to tell of the future, I have a story about mining to give you in my next, in which you will find both Sharps and Flats, which I think will induce you to believe with me—that people who have cultivated a dangerous intimacy with Copper-Heads ought to be cautious, and particularly shy how they _now_ run after Gold-Bugs with a _hum_. C. has been in town, and I passed an evening with him since last I wrote you. He has still the same joyous laugh, that used to set the table in a roar, and it is quite as contagious. At every jest he would burst out with a sort of a shout in his hearty guffaw, which, if practiced at home, must wake the echoes of his native mountain. I was thoughtful over the past, and became partially a convert to your theory, in regard to the chilling effects of extra city refinement; and your beautiful picture of country life, with its honest, hearty friendships, came to my mind forcibly. It must be true, for I confess I _felt_ that I had grown older, and colder, too. Can you, Jeremy, laugh as of yore—as loud and as long?—with the same hearty good will and utter _abandon_. Or is your mirth choked and clogged with bitter remembrances, which will steal upon the heart even in its gayest moments? Thought! is _it_ a companion with which you can entertain hilarity? Or is your joy overshadowed with the darkness of evil that has been, or that you anticipate, you scarce know why? I cannot experience the light-heartedness we had formerly. Perhaps it is that I attempt its cultivation. It must come of natural buoyancy of spirits, I think, to be genuine. It is else but a hot-house plant in a snow-storm—its leaves torn off by the blast or shriveled in a frosty embrace. I doubt much whether our intellectual pleasures, as we proudly call them, are half as exhilarating, and deeply steeped in genuine happiness, as were those more animal sensations which we experienced when boys, as we went hallooing and shouting along in the very exuberance of our spirits, with a gay, glad, spirited defiance of care and all its imps. This was the riches of the heart and not of the pocket. Was it not? We had no gold in those days, so it could not have been _that_! G. R. G. * * * * *