Mountjoy - Page 2

hollyhocks, with honeysuckle and sweetbrier
clambering about every window. A brood of hereditary pigeons sunned
themselves upon the roof; hereditary swallows and martins built about the
eaves and chimneys; and hereditary bees hummed about the flower-beds.

Under the influence of our story-books every object around us now assumed a
new character, and a charmed interest. The wild flowers were no longer the
mere ornaments of the fields, or the resorts of the toilful bee; they were
the lurking-places of fairies. We would watch the humming-bird, as it
hovered around the trumpet creeper at our porch, and the butterfly as it
flitted up into the blue air, above the sunny tree-tops, and fancy them
some of the tiny beings from fairyland. I would call to mind all that I had
read of Robin Goodfellow and his power of transformation. Oh, how I envied
him that power! How I longed to be able to compress my form into utter
littleness; to ride the bold dragonfly; swing on the tall bearded grass;
follow the ant into his subterraneous habitation, or dive into the
cavernous depths of the honeysuckle!

While I was yet a mere child I was sent to a daily school, about two miles
distant. The schoolhouse was on the edge of a wood, close by a brook
overhung with birches, alders, and dwarf willows. We of the school who
lived at some distance came with our dinners put up in little baskets. In
the intervals of school hours we would gather round a spring, under a tuft
of hazel-bushes, and have a kind of picnic; interchanging the rustic
dainties with which our provident mothers had fitted us out. Then, when our
joyous repast was over, and my companions were disposed for play, I would
draw forth one of my cherished story-books, stretch myself on the green
sward, and soon lose myself in its bewitching contents.

I became an oracle among my schoolmates on account of my superior
erudition, and soon imparted to them the contagion of my infected fancy.
Often in the evening, after school hours, we would sit on the trunk of some
fallen tree in the woods, and vie with each other in telling extravagant
stories, until the whip-poor-will began his nightly moaning, and the
fireflies sparkled in the gloom. Then came the perilous journey homeward.
What delight we would take in getting up wanton panics in some dusky part
of the wood; scampering like frightened deer; pausing to take breath;
renewing the panic, and scampering off again, wild with fictitious terror!

Our greatest trial was to pass a dark, lonely pool, covered with
pond-lilies, peopled with bullfrogs and water snakes, and haunted by two
white cranes. Oh! the terrors of that pond! How our little hearts would
beat as we approached it; what fearful glances we would throw around! And
if by