"Ah, dear old times! there once it was my hap, Perched on a stool, to wear the long-eared cap; From books degraded, there I sat at ease, A drone, the envy of compulsory bees; Rewards of merit, too, full many a time, Each with its woodcut and its moral rhyme, And pierced half-dollars hung on ribbons gay About my neck--to be restored next day, I carried home, rewards as shining then As those which deck the lifelong pains of men, More solid than the redemanded praise With which the world beribbons later days. "Ah, dear old times! how brightly ye return! How, rubbed afresh, your phosphor traces burn! The ramble schoolward through dewsparkling meads; The willow-wands turned Cinderella steeds, The impromptu pinbent hook, the deep remorse O'er the chance-captured minnow's inchlong corse; The pockets, plethoric with marbles round, That still a space for ball and pegtop found, Nor satiate yet, could manage to confine Horsechestnuts, flagroot, and the kite's wound twine, And, like the prophet's carpet could take in, Enlarging still, the popgun's magazine; The dinner carried in the small tin pail, Shared with the dog, whose most beseeching tail And dripping tongue and eager ears belied The assumed indifference of canine pride; The caper homeward, shortened if the cart Of neighbor Pomeroy, trundling from the mart, O'ertook me,--then, translated to the seat I praised the steed, how staunch he was and fleet, While the bluff farmer, with superior grin, Explained where horses should be thick, where thin, And warned me (joke he always had in store) To shun a beast that four white stockings wore. What a fine natural courtesy was his! His nod was pleasure, and his full bow bliss; How did his well-thumbed hat, with ardor rapt, Its decorous curve to every rank adapt! How did it graduate with a courtly ease The whole long scale of social differences, Yet so gave each his measure running o'er, None thought his own was less, his neighbor's more; The squire was flattered, and the pauper knew Old times acknowledged 'neath the threadbare blue! Dropped at the corner of the embowered lane, Whistling I wade the knee-deep leaves again, While eager Argus, who has missed all day The sharer of his condescending play, Comes leaping onward with a bark elate And boisterous tail to greet me at the gate; That I was true in absence to our love Let the thick dog's-ears in my primer prove." I add only one further extract, which will possess a melancholy interest to all such as have endeavored to glean the materials of revolutionary history from the lips of aged persons, who took a part in the actual making of it, and, finding the manufacture profitable, continued the supply in an adequate proportion to the demand.