wayward and strange workings I am endeavouring to describe; and yet in this case, and in all its accompaniments, I have as perfect a recollection of facts, and reverence of feeling, as if I were yet the child of seven, visited for the first time with tidings of death. My grandmother's end drew nigh, and I was commanded, or rather dragged, to her bedside. There I still see her lying, calm, but emaciated, in remarkably white sheets, and a head dress which seemed to speak of some approaching change. It was drawn closely over her brow, and covered the chin up to her lips. Nature had manifestly given up the contest; and although her voice was scarcely audible, her reason evidently continued unclouded and entire. She spoke to me slowly and solemnly of religion, obedience to my mother, and being obliging to every one; laid, by my mother's assistance, her hand upon my head, as I kneeled at her bedside, and in a few instants had ceased to breathe. I lifted up my head at my mother's bidding, and beheld a corpse. What I saw or what I felt, I can never express in words. I can only recollect that I sprang immediately, horror-struck, to my feet, rushed out at the door, made for the closest and thickest part of the brushwood of the adjoining brae, and, casting myself headlong into the midst of it, burst into tears. I wept, nay, roared aloud; my grief and astonishment were intense whilst they lasted, but they did not last long; for when I returned home about dusk, I found a small table spread over with a clean cloth, upon which was placed a bottle with spirits, a loaf of bread, and cheese cut into pretty large pieces. Around this table sat my mother, with two old women from the nearest hamlet. They were talking in a low but in a wonderfully cheerful tone, as I thought, and had evidently been partaking of refreshment. Being asked to join them, I did so; but ever and anon the white sheet in the bed, which shaped itself out most fearfully into the human form, drew my attention, and excited something of the feeling which a ghost might have occasioned. I had ceased in a great measure to feel for my grandmother's death. I now felt the alarms and agitations of superstition. It was not because she had fled from us that I was agitated, but because that, though dead, she still seemed present, in all the inconceivable mystery of a dead life! The funeral called forth, from the adjoining glens and cottages, a respectable attendance, and at the same time gave me an opportunity of partaking, unnoticed, of more refreshment than suited the occasion or my years; in fact, I became little less than intoxicated, and was exceedingly surprised at finding myself, towards evening, in the midst of the same bush where I had experienced my paroxysm of grief, singing aloud, in all the exultation of exhilarated spirits. Such is infancy and boyhood-- "The tear forgot, as soon as shed."