yield fair and ample returns. We will call the will-power or moral force the checks that draw upon the invested sums. So long as only the regularly-accruing interest is used up by your daily and yearly expenses you are none the poorer, and the community in which you live is the richer for what you throw into general circulation. From the day in which you begin to draw upon the principal, the interest becomes smaller. The necessity of accumulation obtrudes itself if you would not be gradually impoverished.

SPRING-TIME AND BOYHOOD.

DONALD G. MITCHELL.

["Ik Marvel," under which pseudonyme Donald G. Mitchell has long been known, stands as the author of several beautifully-written books, of a philosophically reflective character, which have enjoyed a high degree of favor with the reading public. The "Reveries of a Bachelor" and "Dream-Life" but put into words the thoughts which float through every imaginative mind, and in reading them we seem to behold our own waking dreams mirrored on the printed page. Mr. Mitchell is the author of several other works, among them a record of a tour in Europe, and "Dr. Johns," an ably-written novel. The selection given below is from "Dream-Life." Mr. Mitchell was born at Norwich, Connecticut, in 1822.]

THE old chroniclers made the year begin in the season of frosts; and they have launched us upon the current of the months from the snowy banks of January. I love better to count time from Spring to Spring: it seems to me far more cheerful to reckon the year by blossoms than by blight.

Bernardin de St. Pierre, in his sweet story of Virginia, makes the bloom of the cocoa-tree, or the growth of the

banana, a yearly and a loved monitor of the passage of her life. How cold and cheerless in the comparison would be the icy chronology of the North!-So many years have I seen the lakes locked, and the foliage die!

The budding and blooming of Spring seem to belong properly to the opening of the months. It is the season of the quickest expansion, of the warmest blood, of the readiest growth; it is the boy-age of the year. The birds sing in chorus in the Spring,-just as children prattle; the brooks run full,-like the overflow of young hearts; the showers drop easily,-as young tears flow; and the whole sky is as capricious as the mind of a boy.

Between tears and smiles, the year, like the child, struggles into the warmth of life. The Old Year-say what the chronologists will-lingers upon the very lap. of Spring, and is only fairly gone when the blossoms of April have strown their pall of glory upon his tomb and the bluebirds have chanted his requiem.

It always seems to me as if an access of life came with the melting of the winter's snows, and as if every rootlet of grass, that lifted its first green blade from the matted débris of the old year's decay, bore my spirit upon it, nearer to the largess of Heaven.

I love to trace the break of Spring step by step; I love even those long rain-storms, that sap the icy fortresses. of the lingering winter,-that melt the snows upon the hills, and swell the mountain-brooks,-that make the pools. heave up their glassy cerements of ice, and hurry down. the crashing fragments into the wastes of ocean.

I love the gentle thaws that you can trace, day by day, by the stained snow-banks, shrinking from the grass, and by the quiet drip of the cottage eaves. I love to search out the sunny slopes under some northern shelter, where the reflected sun does double duty to the earth, and

where the frail hepatica, or the faint blush of the arbutus, in the midst of the bleak March atmosphere, will touch your heart, like a hope of heaven in a field of graves. Later come those soft, smoky days, when the patches of winter grain show green under the shelter of leafless woods, and the last snow-drifts, reduced to shrunken skeletons of ice, lie upon the slope of northern hills, leaking away their life.

Then the grass at your door grows into the color of the sprouting grain, and the buds upon the lilacs swell and burst. The peaches bloom upon the wall, and the plums wear bodices of white. The sparkling oriole picks string for his hammock on the sycamore, and the sparrows twitter in pairs. The old elms throw down their dingy flowers, and color their spray with green; and the brooks, where you throw your worm or the minnow, float down whole fleets of the crimson blossoms of the maple. Finally the oaks step into the opening quadrille of spring, with grayish tufts of a modest verdure, which by and by will be long and glossy leaves. The dog-wood pitches his broad, white tent in the edge of the forest; the dandelions lie along the hillocks, like stars in a sky of green; and the wild cherry, growing in all the hedge-rows, without other culture than God's, lifts up to Him thankfully its tremulous white fingers.

Amid all this come the rich rains of Spring. The affections of a boy grow up with tears to water them; and the year blooms with showers. But the clouds hover over an April sky timidly, like shadows upon innocence. The showers come gently, and drop daintily to the earth,with now and then a glimpse of sunshine to make the drops bright,-like so many bubbles of joy.

The rain of winter is cold, and it comes in bitter scuds that blind you; but the rain of April steals upon you

coyly, half reluctantly,-yet lovingly,-like the steps of a bride to the altar.

It does not gather like the storm-clouds of winter, gray and heavy along the horizon, and creep with subtle and insensible approaches (like age) to the very zenith; but there are a score of white-winged swimmers afloat, that your eye has chased as you lay beguiled with the delicious warmth of an April sun; nor have you scarce noticed that a little bevy of those floating clouds had grouped together in a sombre company. But presently you see across the fields the dark gray streaks, stretching like lines of mist from the green bosom of the valley to that spot of sky where the company of clouds is loitering; and with an easy shifting of the helm the fleet of swimmers come, drifting over you, and drop their burden into the dancing pools, and make the flowers glisten and the eaves drip with their crystal bounty.

The cattle linger by the watercourses, cropping eagerly the firstlings of the grass; and childhood laughs joyously at the warm rain, or under the cottage roof catches with eager ear the patter of its fall.

And with that patter on the roof-so like to the patter of childish feet-my story of boyish dreams shall begin.

It is an old garret, with big brown rafters; and the boards between are stained darkly with the rain-storms of fifty years. And as the sportive April shower quickens its flood, it seems as if its torrents would come dashing through the shingles upon you, and upon your play. But they will not; for you know that the old roof is strong, and that it has kept you, and all that love you, for long years from the rain and from the cold; you know that the hardest storms of winter will only make a little oozing leak, that trickles down, leaving homely brown stains.

You love that old garret-roof; and you nestle down under its slope with a sense of its protecting power that no castle-walls can give to your maturer years. Ay, your heart clings in boyhood to the roof-tree of the old family garret with a grateful affection and an abiding confidence, that the after-years-whatever may be their successes or their honors-can never re-create. Under the roof-tree of his home the boy feels SAFE: and where in the whole realm of life, with its bitter toils and its bitterer temptations, will he feel safe again?

But this you do not know. It seems only a grand old place; and it is capital fun to search in its corners, and drag out some bit of quaint furniture, with a leg broken, and lay a cushion across it, and fix your reins upon the lion's claws of the feet, and then-gallop away! And you offer sister Nelly a chance, if she will be good; and throw out very patronizing words to little Charlie, who is mounted upon a much humbler horse,-to wit, a decrepit nursery-chair,-as he of right should be, since he is three. years your junior.

I know no nobler forage-ground for a romantic, venturesome, mischievous boy, than the garret of an old family mansion on a day of storm. It is a perfect field of chivalry. The heavy rafters, the dashing rain, the piles of spare mattresses to carouse upon, the big trunks to hide in, the ancient white coats and hats hanging in obscure corners, like ghosts, are great! And it is so far away from the old lady who keeps rule in the nursery, that there is no possible risk of a scolding for twisting off the fringe of the rug. There is no baby in the garret to wake up. There is no 16 company" in the garret to be disturbed by the noise. There is no crotchety uncle, or grandmamma, with their everlasting "Boys, boys!" and then a look of such horror!