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FRANCE, IN OLD TIMES.
95
lambs playfully cropped the tender leaves. Quiet kids stood ruminating by the clear streams. Music was in all the branches. The father-bird cheered his companion, who, patient on her nest, brooded their future hopes.
" Surely," thought he, "the peasant is the most happy of men, dwelling in the midst of the innocence and beauty of creation."
Then, with the inconsistency natural to youth, he would extol the life of a soldier, his energy, hardihood, and contempt of danger ; forgetting that, in this preference of War, he was applauding the science of all others most hostile to nature and to man.
In the midst of such reflections he