It is only a few days, and this chase in the schoolyard will be transferred into life, where no walls will hem them in, and away they will go to the four winds of Heaven, and another set will take their places as they took ours. Ours! Do you remember anything about those days in the midst of your invoices and bills of lading, your Berlin wools and Grecian Bends, and somebody coming home to tea and nothing in the house to eat? Do you remember the little red school-house on the hill, with poplar trees in front of it, that you used to think almost touched the sky? Do you remember the school mistress, with her pale face and sweet smile, and her little blue ribbon, now sleeping under the flowers, for school's out forever, and she has a long vacation? Do you remember the little girl in white apron and blue gown, with blue eyes and golden curls, whose satchel you carried up the hill, and whose name you cut into the bark of the apple-trees, vowing an eternal constancy--an eternity which lasted until the apple-trees lost the last of their pink-and-white blossoms? Do you remember the swallows which twittered round the eaves of the school house all the spring and summer, and suddenly one bright morning all left together, scared by a little brown bird, who came from the far north, and told them a story of something coming, which made them all shiver? And when that something came, do you remember the old box stove piled up with logs, and the snow-houses, and the nuts and cider, and the forfeits at the parties, especially that one where you carried the pillow to the girl with black hair, instead of little Gold Curls, not being on speaking terms with her, and the school mistress, with cheeks paler, and eyes brighter than ever, and flushes in the face which came and went like lightnings in the western sky in summer eves, for the little brown bird did not warn her that she ought to go with the swallows? You remember that when the swallows came back one sunny morning in the next May, they did not find the school-mistress, for she went away with the brown bird. If you don't remember any of these things, I pity you, for the friction of life must have worn you quite smooth, and the outlook must be very dreary. October 11, 1868. _A NEW LIFE._