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young Crusoe did, but to New York,-and take passage as a sailor; and how, if they knew you were going, there would be such a world of good-byes; and how, if they did not know it, there would be such a world of wonder!

And then the sailor's dress would be altogether such a jaunty affair; and it would be such rare sport to lie off upon the yards far aloft, as you have seen sailors in pictures, looking out upon the blue and tumbling sea. No thought now in your boyish dreams, of sleety storms, and cables stiffened with ice, and crashing spars, and great ice-bergs towering fearfully around you!

You would have better luck than even Crusoe; you would save a compass, and a Bible, and stores of hatchets, and the captain's dog, and great puncheons of sweetmeats (which Crusoe altogether overlooked); and you would save a tent or two, which you could set up on the shore, and an American flag, and a small piece of cannon, which you could fire as often as you liked. At night, you would sleep in a tree-though you wonder how Crusoe did it,—and would say the prayers you had been taught to say at home, and fall to sleep,-dreaming of Nelly and Charlie.

At sunrise, or thereabouts, you would come down, feeling very much refreshed; and make a very nice breakfast off of smoked herring and sea-bread, with a lit

tle currant jam, and a few oranges. After this you would haul ashore a chest or two of the sailors' clothes, and putting a few large jack-knives in your pocket, would take a stroll over the island, and dig a cave somewhere, and roll in a cask or two of sea-bread. And you fancy yourself growing after a time very tall and corpulent, and wearing a magnificent goat-skin cap, trimmed with green ribbons, and set off with a plume. You think you would have put a few more guns in the palisade than Crusoe did, and charged them with a little more grape.

After a long while, you fancy a ship would arrive, which would carry you back; and you count upon very great surprise on the part of your father, and little Nelly, as you march up to the door of the old family mansion, with plenty of gold in your pocket, and a small bag of cocoanuts for Charlie, and with a great deal of pleasant talk, about your island, far away in the South Seas.

-Or, perhaps it is not Crusoe at all, that your eyes and your heart cling to, but only some little story about Paul and Virginia;—that dear little Virginia ! how many tears have been shed over her-not in garrets only, or by boys only!

You would have liked Virginia-you know you would; but you perfectly hate the beldame aunt, who sent for her to come to France; you think she must

have been like the old school-mistress, who occasionally boxes your ears with the cover of the spelling-book, or makes you wear one of the girls' bonnets, that smells strongly of paste-board, and calico.

As for black Domingue, you think he was a capital old fellow; and you think more of him, and his bananas, than you do of the bursting, throbbing heart of poor Paul. As yet, Dream-life does not take hold on love. A little maturity of heart is wanted, to make up what the poets call sensibility. If love should come to be a dangerous, chivalric matter, as in the case of Helen Mar and Wallace, you can very easily conceive of it, and can take hold of all the little accessories of male costume, and embroidering of banners; but as for pure sentiment, such as lies in the sweet story of Bernardin de St. Pierre, it is quite beyond you.

The rich, soft nights, in which one might doze in his hammock, watching the play of the silvery moonbeams upon the orange leaves, and upon the waves, you can understand; and you fall to dreaming of that lovely Isle of France; and wondering if Virginia did not perhaps have some relations on the island, who raise pine-apples, and such sort of things, still?

And so, with your head upon your hand, in your quiet garret corner, over some such beguiling story, your thought leans away from the book, into your own dreamy cruise over the sea of life.

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T is a proud thing to go out from under the realm of a school-mistress, and to be enrolled in a company of boys who are under the guidance of a master. It is one of the earliest steps of worldly pride, which has before it a long and tedious ladder of ascent. Even the advice of the old mistress, and the nine-penny book that she thrusts into your hand as a parting gift, pass for nothing; and her kiss of adieu, if she tenders it in the sight of your fellows, will call up an angry rush of blood to the cheek, that for long years, shall drown all sense of its kindness.

You have looked admiringly many a day upon the tall fellows who play at the door of Dr. Bidlow's school you have looked with reverence, second only

to that felt for the old village church, upon its darklooking heavy brick walls. It seemed to be redolent of learning; and stopping at times, to gaze upon the gallipots and broken retorts, at the second story window, you have pondered, in your boyish way, upon the inscrutable wonders of Science, and the ineffable dignity of Dr. Bidlow's brick school!

Dr. Bidlow seems to you to belong to a race of giants; and yet he is a spare, thin man, with a hooked nose, a large, flat, gold watch-key, a crack in his voice, a wig, and very dirty wristbands. Still you stand in awe at the mere sight of him;—an awe that is very much encouraged by a report made to you by a small boy,-that "Old Bid" keeps a large ebony ruler in his desk. You are amazed at the small boy's audacity it astonishes you that any one who had ever smelt the strong fumes of sulphur and ether in the Doctor's room, and had seen him turn red vinegar blue, (as they say he does) should call him "Old Bid!"

You, however, come very little under his control: you enter upon the proud life, in the small boy's department, under the dominion of the English master. He is a different personage from Dr Bidlow: he is a dapper, little man, who twinkles his eye in a peculiar fashion, and who has a way of marching about the school-room with his hands crossed behind

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