I.
Rain in the Garret.
IT is an old garret with big, brown rafters; and the boards between are stained darkly with the rain-storms of fifty years. And as the sportive April shower quickens its flood, it seems as if its torrents would come dashing through the shingles, upon you, and upon your play. But it will not; for you know that the old roof is strong; and that it has kept you, and all that love you, for long years from the rain, .and from the cold: you know that the hardest storms of winter will only make a little oozing leak, that trickles down the brown stains,—like tears.
You love that old garret roof; and you nestle down under its slope, with a sense of its protecting power that no castle walls can give to your maturer years. Aye, your heart clings in boyhood to the roof-tree of the old family garret, with a grateful affection, and an earnest confidence, that the
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