In the Footprints of the Padres

o close most books. Within those pages-perhaps some day to be opened to the kindly inquiring eye-lie the records of a quiet life, stirred at intervals by

hat we were at last to go to him, and dwell there with the fabulous in a new home more or less fabulous,-yet we felt that it must be altogether lovely. We said good-bye to everybody,-getting friends and fellow-citizens more or less mixed as the hour of departure from our native city drew near. We wer

he most famous place of amusement in the land. Four years later, when I was sixteen, very far from home and under that good gentleman's watchful supervision, I asked leave to witness a dramatic version of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," enacted by a small company of strolling players in a canvas tent. There were no blood-h

em harmless. And, then, those beguiling words "Lecture Room" have such a soothing sound! They seemed in those days to hallow the whole function, which was, of course, the wily wish of the great moral entertainer; and his great moral entertainment was even as "the cups that cheer but not inebriate." It came near it in

the deck ran rivers of tears, it seemed to me; and when, after the lingering agony of farewells had reached the climax, and the shore-lines were cast off, and the Star of the West swung out into the stream, with great side-wheels fitfully revolving, a shriek rent the air and froze my young blood. Some mother parting from a son who was on board our vessel, no longer able to restrain her emotion, was borne away, frantically raving in the delir

pecial horror in the darkness, as well as in the wind that hissed through the rigging, and in the waves that rushed past us, sheeted

verything was sticky with salty distillations; when half the passengers were sea-sick and the other half sick of the sea. The de

b Abbot; and this book of juvenile travel and adventure I read on the spot, as it were,-read it carefully, critically; flattering myself that I was a lad of experience, capable of detecting any nautical error which Jacob, one of the most prolific authors of his day, migh

story of Robinson Crusoe that the first island I ever saw dawned upon my enchanted vision. We had weathered Cape Sable and the Florida Keys. No sky was ever more marvellously blue than the sea beneath us. The

forsooth, some of them to find their way at last into the mazes of that mysterious, mighty, menacing sargasso sea. Strange sea-monsters, more beautiful than monstrous, sported in the foam about our prow, and at intervals dashed it with color

many a shade of lighter or darker green fretting its surface, throwing cliff and crest into high relief, and hinting at misty and mysterious vales, as fair as fathomless. It floated up like a cloud from the nether world, and was at first

and along whose shore the sea sang softly, and the creaming breakers wreathed themselves, flashed like snow-drifts, vanished and flashed again. The sea danced and sparkled; the

e passed it by. Even as it had risen from the sea it returned into its bosom and was se

Its memory lives and is as green as ever. No wintry blasts visit it; even the rich dyes of autumn do not discolor it. It is

een passed within its tranquil shade: from generation to generation it has known all that they have known of joy or sorrow. All the world that they have knowledge of has

ers are forced to live: the independence of that life-for a man's island is his fortress, girded about with the fathomless moat of the sea; and the dependence of it-for what is that island but an atom dotting watery space and so easily cut off from communicat

provided he be native born; what can he wish for that is beyond the knowledge he has gained from the objects within his reach? The

ealed to me and filled me with a great long

bright little

mmer ocean, fa

es since; the loneliness that starves the heart, tortures the brain, and leaves the m

ng them, and might any day hear the glad cry of "Land ho!" But we heard it not until the morning of the eleventh day out from New York. The sea seemed more lonesome than ever when we lost our, island; the monotony of our life was almost unbroken. We began to feel as prisoners