O, for boyhood’s time of June, Crowding years in one brief moon, When all things I heard or saw, Me, their master, waited, for I was rich in flowers and trees, Humming birds and honey-bees; For my sport the squirrel played, Plied the snouted mole his spade; For my taste the blackberry cone Purpled over hedge and stone; Laughed the brook for my delight, Through the day and through the night, Whispering at the garden wall, Talked with me from fall to fall; Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond, Mine the walnut slopes beyond, Mine, on bending orchard trees, Apples of Hesperides! Still as my horizon grew, Larger grew my riches, too; All the world I saw and knew Seemed a complex Chinese toy, Fashioned for a barefoot boy! O, for festal dainties spread, Like my bowl of milk and bread— Pewter spoon and bowl of wood, On the door-stone, gray and rude— O’er me like a regal tent, Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent, Purple-curtained, fringed with gold, Looped in many a wind-swung fold; While for music came the play Of the pied frogs’ orchestra; And, to light the noisy choir, Lit the fly his lamps of fire. I was monarch; pomp and joy Waited on the barefoot boy! Cheerily, then, my little man, Live and laugh, as boyhood can! Though the flinty slopes be hard, Stubble-speared the new-mown sward, Every morn shall lead thee through Fresh baptisms of the dew; Every evening from thy feet Shall the cool wind kiss the heat: All too soon these feet must hide In the prison cells of pride, Lose the freedom of the sod, Like a colt’s for work be shod, Made to tread the mills of toil, Up and down in ceaseless moil: Happy if their track be found Never on forbidden ground; Happy if they sink not in Quick and treacherous sands of sin: Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy, Ere it passes, barefoot boy! —_John Greenleaf Whittier._ A STORY OF WASHINGTON. [Illustration] During the Revolutionary War, the corporal of a little band of soldiers was giving orders about a heavy beam which they were trying to raise to the top of the wall. It was almost too heavy for them, and the voice of the corporal was often heard shouting, “Heave away! There it goes! Heave ho!” A man in citizen’s clothes was passing, and asked the corporal why he did not help them. Very much astonished, the corporal replied, with the pomp of an emperor, “Sir, I am a corporal!” “You are, are you?” replied the stranger; “I was not aware of that,” and taking off his hat he bowed, saying, “I ask your pardon, Mr. Corporal.”