MARY'S FIRST HOME. 9

made such a bright, cheerful blaze, that children
might play by it a whole winter’s evening with-
out thinking of a candle or lamp. But these were
only the smallest part of the pleasures of that dear
home. Its greatest enjoyments were not to be
found within doors. These were in standing,
guarded by her ‘‘ Maumer,” as she still calls her
black nurse, on the river’s edge, to see her father’s
fisherman paddle out in his canoe and throw his
lines for fish, or, in the still evening, as the boat
glided noiselessly along, cast his net for shrimp or
prawn, or in long rambles through the fields and
along roads bordered on each side by woods; and
sometimes she was allowed to extend her rambles
into these woods in search of jessamines, in the
early spring, and of blackberries and whortle-
berries in summer. And oh, the beauty and the
fragrance of those woods! I have been almost
tempted myself to spend one winter, at least, in
that far Southern land, when I have heard Mary
describe them, with their clumps of honey-suckle,
their wreaths of yellow jessamine twining from
tree to tree, the white fringe-tree waving its long
snowy tendrils over the crimson flowers of the