WOULD I WERE A BOY AGAIN.

"We have played the boy again, yesterday and to-day, pretty well," remarked Smith, as we sat in front of oar tents in the evening, smoking our pipes. "And I am half inclined to think we have started for home too soon, after all. Spalding\'s moralizing for the last two or three days deceived me. I thought, as he was becoming so serious, he must be getting tired of the woods; but his proposition yesterday to escort that deer to the shore, and frighten him almost to death, his jolly humor with our young friends over the way, and the trick he played on as in regard to the raccoon this evening, satisfies me that he\'s got a good deal of the boy in him yet. We shall have to retreat from the woods slower than I thought, to exhaust it."

"If the cares of business or the duties of life did not call us back to civilization" said the Doctor, "I could almost spend the summer among these lakes, only for the luxury of feeling like a boy again. When I listen to the glad voices of the wild things around as, I can almost wish myself one of them."

"That coon, for instance," interrupted Smith, "that came so near getting shot by his chattering."

"I call the gentleman to order," said I; "the Doctor has the floor."

"I sometimes think that it is no great thing after all to be human;" the Doctor continued, bowing his acknowledgments for my protecting his right to the floor. "Mind is a great thing, but there is more of sorrow, anxiety, and care clustering about it, than these wild things we hear and see around us suffer through their instincts. Reason, knowledge, wisdom, are great things. To stand at the head of created matter, to be the noblest of all the works of God, the only created thing wearing the image, and stamped with the patent of Diety, are proud things to boast of. But great and glorious and proud as they are, they have their balances of evil. They bring with them no contentment, no repose, while they heap upon us boundless necessities and limitless wants. We are hurried through life too rapidly for the enjoyment of the present, and the good we see in prospect is never attained. When we were boys we longed to be men, with the strength and intellect of men; and now that we are men, with matured powers of body and mind, true to our organic restlessness and discontent, we look back with longing for the feelings and emotions of our boyhood. What a glorious thing it would be if we could always be young—not boys exactly, but at that stage of life when the physical powers are most active, and the heart most buoyant. That, to my thinking, would be a better arrangement than to grow old, even if we live on until we stumble at last from mere infirmity into the grave, looking forward in discontent one half of our lives, and backward in equal discontent the other."

"You remind me," said Spalding, "of a little incident, simple in itself, but which, at the time, made a deep impression upon my mind, and which occurred but a few weeks ago. Returning from my usual walk, one morning, my way lay through the Capitol Park. The trees, covered with their young and fresh foliage, intertwined their arms lovingly above the gravelled walks, forming a beautiful arch above, through which the sun could scarcely look even in the splendor of his noon. The birds sang merrily among the branches, and the odor of the leaves and grass as the dews exhaled, gave a freshness almost of the forest to the morning air. On the walk before me were two beautiful children, a boy of six and a little girl of four. They were merry and happy as the birds were, and with an arm of each around the waist of the other, they went hopping and skipping up and down the walks, stopping now and then to waltz, to swing round and round, and then darting away again with their hop and skip, too full of hilarity, too instinct with vitality, to be for a moment still. The flush of health was on their cheeks, and the warm light of affection in their eyes. They were confiding, affectionate, loving little children, and my heart warmed towards them, as I saw them waltzing and dancing and skipping about under the green foliage of the trees. "\'Willy,\' said the little girl, as they sat down on the low railing of the grass plats, to breathe for a moment, and listen to the chirrup and songs of the birds in the boughs above them, \'Willy, wouldn\'t you like to be a little bird?\'

"\'A little bird, Lizzie,\' replied her brother. \'Why should I like to be a little bird?\'

"\'Oh, to fly around among the branches and the leaves upon the trees,\' said Lizzie, \'and among the blossoms when the morning is warm, and the sun comes out bright and clear in the sky. Oh! they are so happy,\'

"\'But the mornings aint always warm, and the sun don\'t always come up bright and clear in the sky, Lizzy,\' said her brother, \'and the leaves and blossoms aint always on the trees. The cold storms and the winter come and kill the blossoms and scatter the leaves, and what would you do then? I shouldn\'t like to be a bird, but I should like to be a big strong man like father.\'

"\'P............