Peter Pilgrim’s Account of his Schoolmates. No. 1. I sit at my desk to record my recollections of my school-fellows. Many years have now rolled away since those happy days of childhood, when we gathered daily at the old faded school-door to receive, each one, his little share of early instruction. Swiftly the years have passed away since that golden period of time, and as I now gaze with my dimmed vision through the dusty and cloudy glass of time upon those departed scenes, I find that many of them are blurred and indistinct in my memory--that many of them are well-nigh blotted out forever from my remembrance. Yet will I try to revive them from the dust and forgetfulness that time has cast over them, even as one carefully removes the dust that has gathered over an ancient picture, first bringing out to light one bright feature and then another, till at length the whole sweet face, in all its bloom and loveliness, is revealed to sight. The mind is much like an old lumber garret in some ancient country house. Dust, and cobwebs, and oblivion gather deeply upon its miscellaneous contents, and year after year continues to add to the mixed assemblage. Old books and old pictures, time-wrecked furniture, dismantled articles of husbandry, and crippled instruments of housewifery, cumber the place in admired confusion. Nothing is in its place, nothing can be found when sought for and most wanted. Everything lies hidden and forgotten, like the body of the sweet bride in the ballad, whose lost figure rested undiscovered in the old baronial garret, through so many long years after their living entombment. So the thoughts of youth are laid away in the chambers of the mind and the hidden nooks of the memory, there to rest, till haply some accidental association of after years brings them forth to light and life.