I love particularly to go back to that period at which my last chapter closed. I was then full of health, animation, and hope. As yet, my life was tarnished with no other vices or follies than those that belong to an ungoverned and passionate boy. My health was perfect. I can hardly describe the elation of my heart of a spring morning. Everything gave me delight. The adjacent mountains, robed in mist, or wreathed with clouds, seemed like the regions of the blest. The landscape around, tame and commonplace as it might be, was superior to the pictures of any artist that ever laid his colors upon canvass, to my vision. Every sound was music. The idle but joyous gabble of the geese at the brook--the far-off cawing of the crows that skimmed the slopes of the mountains--the multitudinous notes of jays, robins, and blackbirds in the orchard--the lowing of cattle--the cackle of the fowls in the barnyard--the gobble of the ostentatious turkey--were all melody to me. No burst of harmony from an Italian orchestra, even though Rossini composed and Paganini performed, ever touched the heart as those humble melodies of morn, in the little village of Salem, touched mine at the age of fifteen. At such times my bosom actually overflowed with joy. I would sometimes shout aloud from mere pleasure; and then I would run for no other object than the excitement of the race. At such times it seemed almost that I could fly. There was an elasticity in my limbs like that of a mountain deer. So exuberant was this buoyant feeling, that in my dreams, which were then always blissful, I often dreamed of setting out to run, and after a brief space of stepping upward into the air, where I floated like some feather upon the breeze. At evening, I used again to experience the same joyous gust of emotion; and during the day, I seldom felt otherwise than happy. Considering the quiet nature of the place in which I dwelt, my life was marked with numerous incidents and adventures--of little moment to the world at large, but important to a boy of my years. Saturday was, in that golden age, a day always given up to amusement, for there was no school kept then. A description of a single day will give a sufficient idea of my way of life at this period. The day we will suppose to be fine--and in fact it now seems to me that there was no dull weather when I was a boy. Bill Keeler and myself rose with the sun--and we must, of course, go to the mountain. For what? Like knights of the olden time, in search of adventures. Bound to no place, guided by no other power than our own will, we set out to see what we could see, and find what we could find.