with him; but just as we--my wife and I--were ready to go, he was called
away to consecrate some church in the West, and we started on a journey
of two thousand miles through portions of our country I had never seen,
and was ashamed to go abroad again without seeing. On my way back we
stopped in Buffalo, and as I stood in the piazza I saw a little card on
one of the pillars saying that the Rev. Mr. Pierpont would preach in the
evening somewhere. I found him, and we went _together_ at last, and saw
Niagara together, as we had agreed to do forty years before. And that
night the heavens rained fire upon us, and the great November
star-shooting occurred, and our landlord, being no poet, was unwilling
to disturb us, so that we missed the show altogether.

* * * * *

MY GARDEN.


If I could put my woods in song,
And tell what's there enjoyed,
All men would to my gardens throng,
And leave the cities void.

In my plot no tulips blow,
Snow-loving pines and oaks instead,
And rank the savage maples grow
From spring's faint flush to autumn red.

My garden is a forest-ledge,
Which older forests bound;
The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge,