Barbour Jeffersonian

Childhood.

Let those talk of the miseries of childhood that will. I never knew misery in mine; and woe to him that makes the glad heart of infancy sad! He sears the future bud of promise, he is making that woeful which God intended to be glad as the angels in heaven The wisest and the best of men, let them have grown great, and learned, honorable as they might, have always looked back to the shining days of their early youth ere care had made its nest in the heart, and said with a sigh, "O, that I were a boy once more!" Man is a being that must be pursuing some object: the boy in the country has a thousand objects of beauty and curiosity to call forth his attention and ardent spirit, and he is happy as the day is long, at the same time that he is laying up a store of strength and health for years of care and grave duties as he grows up. Ah! those were the times! After years we may be successful and even glorious; we may conquer difficulties, and dispense good and achieve genuine honors; we may grasp power and, dwell in the very lap of riches, but there never will come flowers like those then gathered : pleasures so pure and exquisite as those then enjoyed: never such sunshine, never such beauties in air and earth. in thicket and wood and water—never anything so like Heaven-till Heaven itself is reached.