In this very passion for reiteration may be found a sufficient answer to those uneasy persons who are perpetually attempting to bring new singing-books into our churches, on pretext that people are tired of the old tunes. You never hear from Jamie's pure taste any clamor for new songs or stories. Whenever he climbs up into your lap to be amused, he is sure to ask for the story of "Kitty in Ga'et Window," though he knows it as Boston people know oratorio music, and detects and condemns the slightest departure from the text. And when you have gone through the drama, with all its motions and mewings, he wants nothing so much as "Kitty in Ga'et Window 'gen." Let us keep the old tunes. It is but a factitious need that would change them. Gentle and friendly reader, I pray your pardon for this childish record. Some things I say of set purpose for your good, and the more you do not like them, the more I know they are the very things you need; and I shall continue to deal them out to you from time to time, as you are able to bear them. But this broken, rambling child-talk--with "a few practical reflections, arising naturally from my subject," as the preachers say--was penned only for your pleasure--and mine; and if you do not like it, I shall be very sorry, and wish I had never written it. For we might have gone away by ourselves and enjoyed it all alone;--could we not, Jamie, you and I together? Oh, no, no! Never again! Never, never again! for the mountains that rise and the prairies that roll between us. Ah! well, Jamie, I shall not cry about it. If you had stayed here, it would have been but a little while before you would have grown up into a big boy, and then a young fellow, and then a man, and been of no account. So what does it signify? Good night, little Jamie! good night, darling! Do I hear a sleepy echo, as of old, wavering out of the West, "_Goo-i-dah-ing_"? THE SLEEPER. I. The glen was fair as some Arcadian dell, All shadow, coolness, and the rush of streams, Save where the dazzling fire of noonday fell Like stars within its under-sky of dreams. Rich leaf and blossomed grape and fern-tuft made Odors of Life and Slumber through the shade. II. "O peaceful heart of Nature!" was my sigh, "How dost thou shame, in thine unconscious bliss, Thy calm accordance with the changing sky, O quiet heart, the restless life of this! Take thou the place false friends have vacant left, And bring thy bounty to repair the theft!" III. So sighing, weary with the unsoothed pain From insect-stings of women and of men, Uneasy heart and ever-baffled brain, I breathed the silent beauty of the glen, And from the fragrant shadows where she stood Evoked the shyest Dryad of the wood. IV.