Alexandria gazette. [volume] (Alexandria, D.C.) 1834-1974, 1834-10-08
BoYHooD.

Lights and shadows! sunshine and shade
dreams of happiness, and of disappointment.
The careless siep, the laughing lip and restless
eve. the indifference which neither hopes nor
fears. CAV and sportive heedlessness were the
marked characters Of our younger days Our
life, like that of the butterfly, was at first dull Is
| in its chrysalis, but when our wings had 'trem-
| bled in the worm and we were set free, how
full of animation! We roved from hill top to
HILTON we sauntered from dale to dale, we
pulled the flower blossoms from the river banks
with eager curiosity. How like those flower.
blossoms were our childhood days, enveloped
with lights and shadows!
Our solitude, then, was filled with company.
Our minds needed no living associates. We
found other and better ones, among the
manifold works above and around US. We
discovered, daily, things new to us; and each
little knowledge opened to US other new objects
We went forward tirelessy and wantonly, pry.
| ing every thing TO pieces, examining all things
which we met, and striving to find blue sky
or a bright star behind every obstructlng cloud.
| But how dream-like is the past! We cannot
now turn back our steps; we cannot roam with
our play fellows as Of yore.z An alas: the! are
not to be met with here. Many of them have
gone, like the vanishing stars of the morning.
| and shadows seem to rest upon our hopes. we
cannot tell that the sun will rise. The Deep
thick mists still rest upon the mountain tops and
the sky is becoming covered with spreading
| haze How dark are the shadows which ga
Their around! and vet who can tell that the sun
will not, in all his splendor, come forth to cheer
us onward in our path!
had one acquaintance, who was all that was
lovely and beautiful. His mind was rare
piece of mechanism. 1t was full OF niceties, sin.
pularities and beauties He loved quiet stream
which coursed on near his dwelling. 1t was hisre-
treating place in hours Of dependency and trou.
HE. and in a small boat would he often dash out
upon its deceitful bosom, to make oblivious the
day. by his seclusion from the world. That ri.
yer's bed was his grave and dark shadows hang
over il whenever 1t comes under my conempla.
ton.
Is it not melancholy that one and another Of
| our friends should thus be taken away; that We
should see those who have been endeared 10 US
in childhood by ties the strongest, turning to
ashy paleness and conveyed to the grave? Does
it not, also, when we see ourselG the last lone
trunk upon the plain create in us hopes and be.
liefs that We are spared little longer, to fit our
selves for the entertaining of more blisstu re
gions, to meet those who were worthler thai
ourselves and who have gone before us7 But
yet there are lights of boyhood, bright, buf1
an We su gaze Se5sSsm with rapture
times ibroug6 = They,hold
S S,i% h der besosy B6 Oi1itpCi
1 fesfipgsJ5 Il TO coIte@plate etil Bsrs
4 End the thousand inc tbich varied :
III as we pressed onward toward the
III arena Of lifel Our sports, with their
Z |ny 5hughable combinations escapes
rom dangers and the romantic scenes In which
I'VE so often engaged, furnish world Of thought,
/ when we look with retrospective gaze into the
past, and we would not be deprived OF their hal
lowed Influences They come like rich sounds
of music in the silent night when the hours
\ Ill A. L. Lk e. hair dor
gait has changed to the dull creeping OF pased
age Oh boyhood. bright, beautiful bboyhood
how lovely are thy scenes-how matches art
thou in the sanctity Of thy infuences.-PearL