The isolation, the unity, the integrity of manhood make a strong prop for the mind, but a weak one for the heart.  Dignity can but poorly fill up that chasm of the soul which the home affections once occupied.  Life’s duties and honors press hard upon the bosom that once throbbed at a mother’s tones, and that bounded in a mother’s smiles.

In such home, the strength you boast of seems a weakness; manhood leans into childish memories, and melts—­as Autumn frosts yield to a soft south-wind coming from a Tropic spring.  You feel in a desert, where you once felt at home,—­in a bounded landscape, that was once the world!

The tall sycamores have dwindled to paltry trees; the hills that were so large, and lay at such grand distance to the eye of childhood, are now near by, and have fallen away to mere rolling waves of upland.  The garden-fence, that was so gigantic, is now only a simple paling; its gate that was such a cumbrous affair—­reminding you of Gaza—­you might easily lift from its hinges.  The lofty dove-cote, which seemed to rise like a monument of art before your boyish vision, is now only a flimsy box upon a tall spar of hemlock.

The garret even, with its lofty beams, its dark stains, and its obscure corners, where the white hats and coats hung ghost-like, is but a low loft darkened by age,—­hung over with cobwebs, dimly lighted with foul windows,—­its romping Charlie—­its glee—­its swing—­its joy—­its mystery—­all gone forever.

The old gallipots and retorts are not anywhere to be seen in the second-story window of the brick schoolhouse.  Dr. Bidlow is no more!  The trees that seemed so large, the gymnastic feats that were so extraordinary, the boy that made a snapper of his handkerchief,—­have all lost their greatness and their dread.  Even the springy usher, who dressed his hair with the ferule, has become the middle-aged father of five curly-headed boys, and has entered upon what once seemed the gigantic commerce of “stationery and account-books.”

The marvellous labyrinth of closets at the old mansion where you once paid a visit—­in a coach—­is all dissipated.  They have turned out to be the merest cupboards in the wall.  Nat, who had travelled and seen London, is by no means so surprising a fellow to your manhood as he was to the boy.  He has grown spare, and wears spectacles.  He is not so famous as he was.  You would hardly think of consulting him now about your marriage, or even about the price of goats upon London Bridge.

As for Jenny,—­your first, fond flame!—­lively, romantic, black-eyed Jenny,—­the reader of “Thaddeus of Warsaw,”—­who sighed and wore blue ribbons on her bonnet,—­who wrote love-notes,—­who talked so tenderly of broken hearts,—­who used a glass seal with a Cupid and a dart,—­dear Jenny!—­she is now the plump and thriving wife of the apothecary of the town!  She sweeps out every morning at seven the little entry of the apothecary’s house; she buys a “joint” twice a week from the butcher, and is particular to have the “knuckle” thrown in for soups; she wears a sky-blue calico gown, and dresses her hair in three little flat quirls on either side of her head, each one pierced through with a two-pronged hair-pin.