Is it the leaves and trees, or sheaves
    Of yellow, ripened grain,
  Which wake to me, in memory,
    My boyhood’s days again?

  These seem to say ’t is bonny May,
    As when they sweetly grew,
  And gave their yield, in wood and field,
    To me, when life was new.

  But nought beside—­ah, woe betide!—­
    Which grew with me is here—­
  The home, the hall, the mill, the all
    Which young life holds so dear.

  The school-house, spring, and little thing,
    With eyes so bright and blue,
  Who’d steal away with me and play
    When school’s dull hours were through,

  Are memories now; and yet, oh! how
    It seems but yesterday
  Since I was there, with that sweet dear,
    In the wild wood at play.

  The hill was steep where we would leap;
    The grape-vine swing hung high,
  And I would throw the swing up so
    That, startled, she would cry.

  But though she cried, she still relied
    (And seemed to have no fear)
  On me to hold the swing, and told
    Me “not to frighten her.”

  But I was wild, and she no child,
    And not afraid, I deemed;
  So tossed as high the swing as I
    Could—­when she fell and screamed.

  She was not harmed; but I, alarmed,
    Ran quickly to assist,
  And lifted her, all pale with fear,
    Within my arms, and kissed

  Her pallid cheek, ere she could speak: 
    But I had seen, you know,
  (Ah! what of this? that sight and kiss
    Was fifty years ago,)

  That little boot and pretty foot,
    So neatly formed and small—­
  The swelling calf, and stifled laugh—­
    How I remember all!

  That lovely one has long since gone,
    Is dust, and only dust, now;
  Yet I recall that swing and fall,
    As though it had been just now.

Take these lines, reader, if you please, as an evidence of how the memories growing out of the associations of boyhood’s school-days endure through life.  This association of the sexes operates as a restraint upon both, salutary to good conduct and good morals.  Such restraints are far more effective than the staid lessons of some old, wrinkled duenna of a school-mistress, whose failure to find a sweetheart in girlhood, or a husband in youthful womanhood, has soured her toward every man, and filled her with hatred for the happiness she witnesses in wedded life, and which is ever present all around her.  Her warnings are in violation of nature.  She has forgotten she was ever young or inspired with the feelings and hopes of youth.  Men are monsters, and marriage a hell upon earth.  Girls will not believe this, and will get married.  How much better, then, that they should cultivate, in association, the generous and natural feelings of the heart, and during the period allotted by nature for the growth of the feelings natural to the human