18-

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Your Friend,
HERBERT TRACEY.
an who ha% Recently Entered College.
HARVARD COLLEGE, MAS., May 18, 18-.
I am happy to inform you that I passed my
t1, if I am to believe the commendation bestowed
surprised, soon after my arrival, to meet my

grow less, but by observation and comparison we claBs them where
they belong.
At Cambridge I secured a livery team for a three days' sojourn
among thescenes of my boyhood. Up the Battenkill. Could it be that
this was the great river in which my parents were in such constant
fear of their boy being drowned? Was this the Mississippi of my
childhood? AlasI that I had floated down the Ohio river to the real
Mississippi, that I had .been up the Missouri, two thousand miles
from its mouth, and that I had navigated the Father of Waters, from
its fountain-head to Its outlet, in the Gulf of Mexico.
Had-the Battenkill been drying up? Not at all. Though a brook,
comparatively, there are the same mill-dams, the same trout-hols,
and the same bending willows by its side; and the first to meet ne
among our old neighbors was uncle Nat , the same old jolly fisherman,
returning from his daily piscatorial excursion, with a small string of
trout. Uncle Nat complains bitterly of the scarcity of fish at present
in the river, caused, he says, by "them city chaps" from Troy, New
York and Albany, who are in the habit of sojourniug during the sum-
mer months, in the hotels among the mountains hereabouts.
Stopping first at uncle Henry's, I visited the old homestead towards
evening on the day of my arrival Whatever may be said about the
village and rivers growing smaller, it must certainly be admitted that
the mountains, hills, and rocks hold their own. Up there, on the hill-
side, was "the old house at home," which I had not seen for fifteen
years. I went up the walk. There were the maples that I assisted
father in planting, twenty years ago-great spreading trees now.
Therewas the same rosebush that mother and I cared for sixteen years
ago. No other evidence of the flowers and shrubbery that mother so
much delighted in remained about the premises.
I had learned that the place had passed into the hands of an Irish-
man named Sweeny, so I rapped at the front door, and was met by
Mrs. S., from whom I obtained permission to stroll around the place.
"Oh, yes," said the kind-hearted woman, "go all about, and when
Mr. Swainy comes, he'll go wid ye."
So I strolled in the quiet evening hour, sftone, among the scenes of