Heaven, when your mother peoples it with friends gone, and little Charlie, and that better Friend who, she says, took Charlie in his arms, and is now his Father above the skies, seems a place to be loved and longed for.  But to think that Mr. Such-an-one, who is only good on Sundays, will be there too,—­and to think of his talking as he does of a place which you are sure he would spoil if he were there,—­puzzles you again; and you relapse into wonder, doubt, and yearning.

—­And there, Clarence, for the present, I shall leave you.  A wide, rich heaven hangs above you, but it hangs very high.  A wide, rough world is around you, and it lies very low!

I am assuming in these sketches no office of a teacher.  I am seeking only to make a truthful analysis of the boyish thought and feeling.  But having ventured thus far into what may seem sacred ground, I shall venture still farther, and clinch my matter with a moral.

There is very much religious teaching, even in so good a country as New England, which is far too harsh, too dry, too cold for the heart of a boy.  Long sermons, doctrinal precepts, and such tediously-worded dogmas as were uttered by those honest but hard-spoken men, the Westminster Divines, fatigue, and puzzle, and dispirit him.

They may be well enough for those strong souls which strengthen by task-work, or for those mature people whose iron habit of self-denial has made patience a cardinal virtue; but they fall (experto crede) upon the unfledged faculties of the boy like a winter’s rain upon spring flowers,—­like hammers of iron upon lithe timber.  They may make deep impression upon his moral nature, but there is great danger of a sad rebound.

Is it absurd to suppose that some adaptation is desirable?  And might not the teachings of that Religion, which is the aegis of our moral being, be inwrought with some of those finer harmonies of speech and form which were given to wise ends,—­and lure the boyish soul by something akin to that gentleness which belonged to the Nazarene Teacher, and which provided not only meat for men, but “milk for babes”?

VI.

A New-England Squire.

Frank has a grandfather living in the country, a good specimen of the old-fashioned New-England farmer.  And—­go where one will the world over—­I know of no race of men who, taken as a whole, possess more integrity, more intelligence, and more of those elements of comfort which go to make a home beloved and the social basis firm, than the New-England farmers.

They are not brilliant, nor are they highly refined; they know nothing of arts, histrionic or dramatic; they know only so much of older nations as their histories and newspapers teach them; in the fashionable world they hold no place;—­but in energy, in industry, in hardy virtue, in substantial knowledge, and in manly independence, they make up a race that is hard to be matched.