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DREAMS OF GOLDEN DAYS.

BY MRS. JULIA M'NAIR WRIGHT.

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○ the twenty-first of sente well: I said the ult we of years brings wisdom.

beloved people, left Philadelphia by the North Pennsylvania Railroad. These persons have been from time immemorial known to fame, in the pages of Mother Goose. They were Bobby Shafto, the Old Woman who lived in the Shoe, and Little Dame Crumb. Bobby Shafto had returned from sea, and married the beloved of his soul; the Old Woman had farmed out all her babies; and Little Dame Crumb had set by her broom, and carried her famous penny to pay ber travelling expenses.

Other people take their pleasure trips when all the earth is busy in its summer toils; when the sun is a raging furnace, when in the vineyards the Father turns water into wine; and in the grain fields, creates with his blessing the bread that shall place the lowering shade of famine another year's remove from men. Mother Goose folk make their holiday when labor is done, and their parent earth is taking her joyous ease. When fields stand thick with corn, when orchards hang heavy with fruit, when trees are in their gayest, when birds have no nests to build, and all merry insects are epicureans,even in the golden days of the year do Mother Goose people go abroad to rejoice in regions of pleasaunce.

It was afternoon, and the cars were very full; every body was going home with their city purchases. A cage with a screaming parrot fell down on Dame Crumb's head. A young woman just setting up house-keeping, knocked off Bobby Shafto's hat with a toasting fork; and an anxious mother of a family lost her trunk checks, disturbing the Old Woman in her search for them.

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with baggage. Let all the world carry a single satchel, and be happy."

One by one the shoppers, and the business men, and the school children dropped out of the train at way stations, melted into the hazy distance of green lanes and flower set gardens, and were seen no more.

The travellers had gone up, and up and up, into the realm of hills, and at Bethlehem a great gate swung wide between purple peaks, and they swept through it, out of work and dust and worry, into a blissful land of dreams.

Still on and up; they climbed among those blue veiled summits which had lifted before them as the home of their desire, and lo! other mountain tops lay afar off, and lured them still. A river ran beside their way; a river which man had once brought under his yoke, and made a bondslave for his traffic, but it had torn asunder gates and embankments, locks and bars, and rioted on now madly at its own free will. Along it stood wrecks of stone houses, once homes of lock-keepers and bridge-tenders; but the frantic river had driven them away, and robbed them of their occupation. So the houses stood gloomily staring out of sashless windows, and braved sun and storm in roofless misery; while to Dame Crumb's eyes, touched with the glamour of fairy land, it was plain that brownies played antics in them on moonlight nights; that little people there held revels rare to see; and that strange ghosts of human hopes and passions, that had once been there in flesh and blood, now stalked up and down the abandoned rooms, before cock crowing. Great hills came boldly out and barred the traveller's path, setting themselves like huge apollyons across the track; but, as in days of chiv

alry, all huge monsters succumbed to true knights, so it was now; for Bobby Shafto looked valorous as Gavain, and even Little Dame Crumb might have rivalled Enid in pertinacity. Seeing this bold front, the hills at the last moment before encounter crept back in sharp curves, and gave the pilgrims to Wonder-land right of way; even trailing before them brilliant banners of gold, and scarlet, and purple dye.

Night came on, not blackly as a foe, but tenderly and soothingly as a friend. A delightful veil of mystery was spread by the twilight over all the shifting scene. The river boiled and brawled over rocks and shallows, while misty figures rose out of the spray. The hills that climbed aloft had satisfied all their ambition, and touched the saffron sky; the white villages clung restingly to the green slopes.

"Where are we going?" asked Dame Crumb.

"Anywhere it happens," replied the Old Woman, autocratically. "There is nothing more miserable, Dame, than to travel with a fixed intention."

"It is not very charming to travel in the dark after one is done watching the sparks fly out of the engine." The Dame held out this suggestion meekly, as quite ready to take it back, if it did not suit her companions.

"You are right, Dame," said the Old Woman, cordially.

"Let us stop at the next place," proposed Bobby. "It is time we had supper." Mother Goose people always have good appetites.

When the whistle blew again, each traveller took up a shawl and a satchel, and presently they were standing on a platform before a big house, blazing with kereosene lamps.

"Is this Aladdin's palace?" asked Bobby of the railway porter.

"No," replied that person of practicalities, "this is White Haven."

"I have heard," said the Old Woman, "that it is famous for pepper sauce.' Accordingly the party went into the house and ate pepper sauce and other things.

In the morning there was an inspiring hint of frost in the air. The sun broke forth in splendor, as if he had a new realization of his opportunities. The boy with the bow and arrow had been out, and shot cock sparrows, or something equally as good, and there was an odor of breakfast permeating the halls.

"Shall we call this the climax of all the world?" asked Bobby; "if it is, we will stop here."

"I cannot tell until I have asked the birds," replied the Old Woman, who divined, as did the ancients, by the flight of feathered creatures.

She therefore went on the balcony to look and listen. All the birds flew out

of the right quarter, while

-"with magical sweet singing,
Blackbirds set the woods a ringing,"

the robin fluted in a maple tree; the yellow-hammer from the woods laughed ha ha ha!! and over the corn-fields circled the blue-black crows, calling, stay! stay!!

We are to stop here for a while; this is the top blossom of all the world for the time being; when this flower is fruit, and we have eaten it, we will find a better bloom has opened nearer the sky," said the Old Woman.

"What have you?" asked Bobby of the Dame, after breakfast.

"A bundle of sweet herbs-choose," she replied. Her hands were empty; she spoke metaphorically. "For to-day." said the Old Woman, "I choose the sweets of idlesse." And to this they all agreed.

Indolence, a heavy lout, lurks within doors. Fair Idlesse, a maid of olden time, is to be wooed in woodlands. A mass of trees crowned a steep ascent, and thither climbed the Mother Goose people, through acres of "barrens," where the great stones were venerable with lichens; the hollows were full of ferns, and the gay flowers of autumn lay here and there in patches of bright color.

Bobby Shafto and the Old Woman seated themselves under a great chestnut tree. The Dame wandered away from them, pursuing a zigzag course like a

butterfly; while little was to be seen of her but a red plume on her hat.

Whirr of grasshopper; pipe of bird; gay defiance of crickets, never yet nipped with cold; rustle of leaves on the bough, and stir of grasses under the feet of the breeze, all these made music good to hear. Wiled by the sirens of such sweet sounds, the work-a-day world drifted out of thought; beautiful Atlantis unmoored itself from the land of romance, and floated down into the actual, while Bobby and the Old Woman went gayly singing through its glades. The Old Woman looked at Bobby steadily, smilingly, like a joyous seer. Bobby knew that she had received the gift of second sight. "What is it?" he asked.

"You have on your silver buckles, Bobby, as when you went to sea," cried the prophetess. It is not very often that Bobby Shafto can get on his silver buckles; they are generally interfered with by considerations of taxes, bread and butter, the butcher and other things. When the Old Woman said this, he was glad accordingly.

piest hours; because it was veiled with dainty, purplish, almost intangible blossoms of dry grasses, the ghosts of a departed summer.

The Dame sat down on a stump, holding her bouquet for the benefit of all. The melody in the air; the peace of the prospect; the warmth of the fall sunshine; the fragrance of the woods; the luxuriant beauty of the so-called barrens; the restfulness of the Mother Goose folk, charmed the shy maid Idlesse, and the sprite stood among them, with her magic hand laid on the flowers. The blossoms became coaches to fairy land, and the party were off as by enchantment. Bobby Shafto was a youth once more, with a youth's proud hopes, and every day his ships sailed in laden with every thing delightful from the land of the Impossible. The Old Woman slipped into the world of shadows; among the dead she breathed alone." The heroes and the gracious women of antiquity were about her; she had gone to a world where there was no supper to get, where infants never cried, and where nobody was ever crowded.

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As for Dame Crumb, she went to the best place of all, real true fairy land, where beasts talk, flowers hold fair ladies and lovely babies in their sweet depths, and all is gold, and spice, and sparkle brighter even than the sea in the sunshine!

Now Little Dame Crumb sailed in, laden with her spoils; her nosegay was almost as large as herself. The centre of it was a mass of yarrow, its bitter fragrance like the sweet and sad in legends of its namesake stream. Against the white of the yarrow clustered crimson and orange, and green berries of the solanum, a thing in which beauty is wedded with bane, showing us, as Ruskin says, that things which rise from darkness and decay, are always most deadly when well dressed. Around the white and the brilliant berries, were noble tassels of golden rod, a plant of happy omen, the dauntless herald in the carnival of October. Contrasting well with golden rod, came next a wreath of purple asters, the emblems of jolly old age, finding last days best days; and following this, as is fit, the undying bloom of amaranths, hinting of immortality. The amaranths were white as winter snow, and his gay doublet. The sturdy mullein lifted they were closely garlanded with delicate fronds of fern, both golden and green. Over this nosegay was cast a gentle tinge of melancholy, suited to autumn's hap

This was the morning's happiness. When the sun stood high overhead the people returned to real life, and descended from their elevation to eat pepper sauce. In the afternoon they went back to where lovely Idlesse had met them, and lounged in the sun to watch butterflies. Up and down through all the scented woods, tiny Hipparchia, in black and orange livery, flitted, doing the errands of the fays. Wherever the milk-weed offered its cradles of white silk, Archippus, the luxurious idler of courts, rocked himself to and fro, proud of the velvet trimmings on

its dry stalk into the air, and on its tip Colias Philodice in his lemon-colored suit sat lazily sunning his dainty wings. In the fervid heat of summer noons Colias

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had been a reveller of the maddest type; | beams, light the glad ichor of his ethereal he was drunken with hot sunshine, and frame. he spun about in dizzying circles, and flashed up and down in the scorching

But his day is nearly done; his golden age is changing to October's age of

bronze, and iron days of winter come apace. This little-winged divinity of summer air counts each instant precious, and is no more in haste. He drains each second dry of joy before he lets it go; perched on his mullein throne, he shuts and opens, and opens and shuts his yellow wings; fears no rash hand, desires no good to come, sucks up the sweetness of the passing hour; he too is enjoying dreams of golden days!

And where a late primrose loads the air with fragrance from its beautiful censer, see Antiopia's faded glories. He is a courtier who has gone out of favor; his velvet wings are tarnished and frayed; he is seeking winter quarters; when he has drunken his fill of honey he will hide away; where, Puck, moonlight madcap, alone can tell, and through the gorgeous obsequies of the present reigning season, and the dreary interregnum of winter, Antiopia will hide well; but will come forth for a few brief days to pay his antiquated and unthanked court to the next new crowned summer. Here end the idyls of the butterflies, for evening comes apace, and chill gray shadows fall on all around..

On the next day it was left for Bobby Shafto to choose what should be done; and he being a young man with nautical instincts, made proclamation that they should all go and sail boats.

Woman of the Shoe, claimed a tiny cape, with a cushion of velvet moss to sit on; a mass of ferns, flowers and hemlock for a background; and a store of bright fallen leaves ready to hand. Bobby cut long poles, the Dame gathered autumnpainted branches, and the Old Woman dexterously landed these on the beginnings of islands. "These," she said. "are the Fortunate Isles, where our ships shall sail."

Bobby Shafto whittled out whole fleets of little ships, stuck up a mast in each one, and sent them off by the dozen. His vessels whitened every sea, as England's are supposed to do; he had scores more than he could attend to, and they collided, got aground, drove on rockbound coasts, drifted into whirlpools. were sucked under the logs, and dire wreck and disaster befell them in every quarter of the globe.

"Your ships are all being wrecked!" cried the Dame.

"That is nothing," replied the imperturbable Bobby, "that is part of the fun; I can make more; I am a whole East India Company in myself, and have bought up Cathay. My ships are bound for the Clove Islands, for cinnamonbreathed Ceylon, for China the grotesque, for the diamond regions, and the Gold Coast. They will bring me home more treasures than I shall know what

"Where is a river?" demanded Dame to do with." Crumb.

"We shall find one; you will hear it singing to call us presently," said Bobby; so they set forth, staff in hand. Led by some subtle instinct, Bobby chose a wide road, and they followed it along by houses, trees, ferns, barrens and gardens, until it turned sharply around a wooded hill, and there was their river.

A bridge crossed it; trees shaded it; great logs divided it into still pools; boulders made wonderful rapids and breakers in it, and stumps and stones lifted out of it at intervals, like the product of coral insects, offering foundations for islands. Dame Crumb possessed herself of a fallen birch, lying half in the water; Bobby preémpted a cove where stones and driftwood; the Old

were

But while Mr. Shafto's schemes were thus magnificent, the Dame was retrospective. From her birch-tree she peeled bark, and all her fleet was made of little canoes, reminiscences of early days; and she put a small brown acorn in each one, for Indian maid or warrior, and trusted them to the stream, while she sang songs of red men who lived long ago. matter how she cared for her canoes, they drifted to ruin one by one.

No

"It is as well," said the Little Dame; "they perish like the race we, Mother Goose people, have succeeded."

But the Old Woman was warier and wiser. She braided a hemlock branch into boat shape; she laced it in and out with ferns; she modelled stern, and prow, and keel with the woven fronds; she set

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