Why do we all refer to the period of boyhood as one of happiness? It is not that it had not its own sorrows, nor that they were really so light,--it is simply because it was the season of hope. In after-life, as deception after deception has checked us, when disappointment has dulled expectancy, we become more practical, less dreamy, and, alas! less happy. The possible and the probable of youth are not the possible and the probable of manhood, still less those of riper age. The realms of boyish fancy are as wide as the great ocean; and we revel in them in all the plenitude of unrestricted power. There is not a budding effort of intellect that we do not magnify to ourselves as the origin of future distinction. We exalt our feats of strength and courage into deeds of heroic daring; and we fancy that the little struggles and crosses we meet with are like the great trials and reverses of after-life; and in our pride of success, we deem ourselves conquerors. Oh for one day, for even one short hour, of that time of glorious delusions! Oh that I could once more look out upon the world as one gazes at a sunset at sea, wondering what beauteous lands lie afar off in the distance, and imagining the time when we should be journeying towards them, buoyant, high-hearted, hopeful! Who has ever achieved any success that equalled his boyish ambitions? Who has ever been as great or as good as his early visions have pictured him? I have already told my reader that my youth was not passed in affluence. Our means were limited to the very merest requirements of existence; our food and our clothing were humble as our dwelling; and I believe that many a sore privation was needed to escape the calamity of debt. Of all these hardships I knew nothing at the time; my experience pointed out none who seemed to possess an existence happy as my own. I had all that unvarying affection and devoted love could bestow. My little turret in winter, the fields and the mountains in summer, made up a glorious world, full of interest; and the days seemed never long enough for all my plans of pleasure.