Who can ever forget the joy that comes with the bright Saturday afternoon in the country? The whole school is freed from the thraldom of the bench and task, and each has to choose, among many delights, how to employ the golden hours. One little party decides for a game at ball: so the neat new bats are produced; the well-knit and high-bounding balls are got ready; the slender wickets are set up; the “sides” are carefully chosen, and each rival party labors as zealously for the victory as ever the invincible “old guard” and the gallant “Scotch Greys” toiled for the bloody prize on the deadly plain of Waterloo. Some decide for “a race;” and soon the ruddy cheeks glow with a ruddier bloom, as each panting combatant flings himself, exhausted, on the high-growing grass by the goal. Others content themselves with the more quiet allurements of the top, the kite, the hoop, and the marble. High soars the painted kite, far above the wood-tops and the village steeple, and round flies the giddy hoop till the child that guides it has not breath or strength to propel it further. And some get ready their fishing-gear, and sally forth to the neighboring brook or pond, properly accoutred with rod and basket. For many an hour do they continue to wade through the shallow streamlet; they flounder through the black swamp; they struggle through the tangled thicket, interlaced with all its twisted roots and running vines; they drop in their hooks at each well-known pool and eddy; and return home, when the twilight begins to gather dimly over the landscape, and the shadows of the old trees lengthen in the slanting sun, each one laden with his string of speckled or silvery prizes. Our own inclination usually led us away with the angling party. It was then our chief and unalloyed pleasure, and served to sweeten many a tedious task, and many an hour of scholastic drudgery. If at any time we were degraded to the foot of the class, and our head disgraced with that vile badge, “the foolscap,” we could console ourself with the delightful reminiscences of the rod and line. If at any time the dominie’s rod visited upon our poor back the deficiencies of the head, that same head would be at work in pleasant thoughts of the long rod and the angle, and thereby console the afflicted body for the anguish it had caused it. If a neglected lesson occasioned a temporary imprisonment in a dark room, our fancy would beguile the dreary hours with the anticipated joy of the Saturday afternoon, and the brimming basket of glittering fish. But our reminiscences of those holidays are overcast by a gloomy cloud, which will throw a shadow over many years to come, as it has done on many an hour that is past and gone. The thought of the painful accident we now record, will often obtrude itself upon the mind when its presence is least welcome.