He has gone away; a waif about the land--a feather on the world, driven about, as destiny impels, without fixed intentions; yet buoyant with the ardor of youth, and happy in the excess of youthful hopes, dreamy and wild adventures. He has tasted the savage love of woods and wilds, and the nature--which was born thousands of years ere the teachings of civilization had tamed the wild man into an educated, home-loving being--revives, and the two struggle for mastery in his heart. The bleak mountain-peaks, the wide-extended plain and its wild denizens, and the excitement these give, stirs his bosom, and the wish struggles up to return to them. But the gentler chords of his heart are in tune. The once-loved home, and she, the once-loved and yet-remembered maiden, is there, and it may be she pines for his return. He gazed on the beautiful apparition but a moment gone, and thought of another; and thought begat thought until the loved one he had left rose up to memory's call. He was alone, looking upon the great river through whose turbid waters he was borne away, and he felt he was lengthening a chain linked to his heart which pulled him back--to what, and to whom? It was a vision--a dream with his eyes open: indistinct, unembodied, a very shadow; still it floated about in his imagination, and he was sad. He was in the city--the great Sodom of the West. He was an object of wonder to every curious eye. His wild appearance and gentle manner comported illy, and the thoughtless crowd followed him. Attired now as a civilized being, and feeling that the vagrant life of a savage must lead to grief, he called to mind the tear which stole from the rheumy eyes of the old trapper as he narrated his adventures in the wilderness, and cursed the hour he ever wandered from his home. His life had been a continual danger, his hope had been always to return to his early attachments; but the chain of habit fettered him, and he had learned to love the wild, solitary life, because of its excitements and its dangers. Should he, like this man, come to love the solitude and silence of the wilderness, and find companionship only with his traps and guns?