The County Paper

How happily for us is it ordained that, in the most stirring existences, there are every here and there little resting-spots of reflection, from which, as from some eminence, we look back upon the road we have been treading in life, and cast a wistful glance at the dark vista before us! When first we set out upon our worldly pilgrimage, these are, indeed, precious moments, when, with buoyant heart and spirit high, believing all things, trusting all things, our very youth comes back to us, reflected from every object we meet; and, like Narcissus, we are but worshiping our own image in the water. As we go on in life, the cares, the anxieties, and the business of the world, engross us more and more; and such moments become fewer and shorter. Many a bright dream has been dissolved, many a fairy vision replaced, by some dark reality; blighted hopes, false friendships, have gradually worn callous the heart once alive to every gentle feeling, and time begins to tell upon us; yet still, as the well-remembered melody to which we listened with delight in our infancy brings to our mature age a touch of early years, so will the association of these happy moments recur to us in our reverie, and make us, young again in thought. Then it is that, as we look back upon our worldly career we become convinced how truly is the child the father of the man, how frequently are the projects of our manhood the fruit of some boyish predilection; and that, in the emulative ardor that stirs the school-boy's heart, we may read the prestige of that high daring that makes a hero of its possessor. These moments, too, are scarcely more pleasurable than they are salutary to us. Disengaged, for the time, from every worldly anxiety, we pass in review before our own selves, and in the solitude of our own hearts are we judged. That still small voice of conscience, unheard and unheeded amid the din and bustle of life, speaks audibly to us now; and, while chastened on one side by regrets, we are sustained on the other by some approving thought, and, with many a sorrow for the past, and many a promise for the future, we begin to feel "how good it is for us to be here."

--Charles Lover