Even the home and the hearth are gone; they
'Battled with time and slow decay,'
until at last they were wiped out from the things that are. The song
of the peepers is a pleasant memory, and comes welling up with a
thousand cherished recollections of our vanished youth; but the song
of the cricket that made its home in the jams of the great stone
fire-place is pleasanter, and the memories that come floating back
with his remembered lay are pleasanter still. He was always there. He
was not silent, like the out-door insect, through the spring month and
the cold of winter, piping only in sadness when the still autumnal
evenings close in their brightness and beauty over the earth; but he
sang always, and his chirrup was heard at all seasons. In the winter
the fire on the hearth warmed him; in the summer he had a cool resting
place, and he was cheerful and merry through all the long year. And
this reminds me of an anecdote of a venerable minister, who passed
years ago to his rest. He was a Scotchman, and when preaching to his
own congregation at Salem, in Washington comity, he indulged in broad
Scotch, which to those who were accustomed to it was exceedingly
pleasant. I was a boy then, and was returning with my father from a
visit to Vermont. We stopped over the Sabbath at Salem, and attended
worship in the neat little church of that pleasant village.
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