with vast enthusiasm to Lord Byron, whose own unhappy childhood had been softened and vivified by the same innocent delights.
In truth, the most charming thing about youth is the tenacity of its impressions. If we had the time and courage to study a dozen verses to-day, we should probably forget eleven of them in a fortnight; but the poetry we learned as children remains, for the most part, indelibly fixed in our memories, and constitutes a little Golden Treasury of our own, more dear and valuable to us than any other collection, because it contains only our chosen favorites, and is always within the reach of reference. Once, when I was very young, I asked a girl companion—well known now in the world of literature—if she did not grow weary waiting for trains, which were always late, at the suburban station where she went to school. "Oh, no," was the cheerful reply. "If I have no book, and there is no one here to talk with, I walk up and down the platform and think over the poetry that I know." Admirable occupation for an idle minute! Even the tedium of railway traveling loses half its horrors if one can withdraw
