Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 1.djvu/293

 REMINISCENCES.

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��BEMINISCENCES.

��BY L. W. DODGE.

��Ours the old majestic temple,

Where God's brightness shines

Down the dome so grand and ample,

Propped by lofty pines.

— Whittier

Come with me to the " up country," to the cloud-haunted land of the " Gran- ite Hills ;" the evergreen wilderness of mountain and forest of pine. Our jour- ney shall be in memories of other days ; we will listen to the murmurings of wa- ters which have long since run to the sea; to music among the trees swayed by winds which rose and fell with the unforgotten past; to the rustling of leaves which fluttered to the ground in an autumn of " auld lang syne."

Oh ! the delight of those recollections ! Unhappy the man who in these days of selfish pride, and of eager hastenings to be called rich, cannot call from his treasure-house of things new and old, aught to cheer from the garnered memo- ries of youth ; perrennial rays of refresh- ing sunshine to brighten the pathway of years.

You remember a few weeks since, as we were sitting \ipon the summit of the " high knoll " yonder, looking eastward toward " Kah-wan-en-te " and its wind- swept ravines ; from the shadows of the valley between this and the height where the dazzling streamlet gleams aloft, your ear caught the murmur of distant wa- ters, as it came and went with the sweep of the wind over the hills and through the forest. I promised then at no distant day to give you an introduction to those dreamy solitudes.

I shall never forget my first acquain- tance with that winsome glen and its joy- ous stream : it was in one of those years which we love to remember, albeit they were not all of gladness ; in the days of the buried past ; green grow the grass and bright the flowers above it. The valley was then in its wildest;

��many of these hills were not yet disfor- ested, and the grand old woods, nature's uncultured parks, stretched away toward the mountain there in all their primeval magnificence. We had watched the deepening shadows, and listened to the wild murmuring of its waters at evening, and traced its course by the rising mists of morn as they came up from river and moorland; but there was a point, a boundary in the wilderness, beyond which our boyish feet had never ven- tured.

There came a time, however, as beau- tiful a summer day as ever gladdened a sunlit world. Is was the Sabbath. Yes; and why not? If the heart is right, what matters it where we worship ; whether in the " forest sanctuary, with its leafy arches and hemlock spires," or 'neath the lofty dome and at the dark chancel of the cathedral? There can be no holier calm in all the world than that which possesses the soul on a quiet Sabbath day 'mid those evergreen aisles, where there is " music in the trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything ;" and no one with high aspirations and good intentions can go out, of a Sunday morn, communing with nature in her wildest haunts, and not return at evening a wiser, calmer, and therefore a better, man. " The Sab- bath was made for man, and God made it."

Never are the hearts of mortals moved to better or deeper emotions than when listening by the sounding sea or laugh- ing rivulet; gazing far off from some mountain summit or dreaming among the leafy solitudes of the wild- wood.

"He of Nazareth" was stirred with like emotions, I ween, when He " went up into a mountain and taught them ; saying, Blessed," etc. ; and who does not believe that those holy men of old, who

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