Every man who has any sort of affection or sentiment is glad to re-visit familiar scenes; yet, there is something startling in the return after long absence. We think of all that we have done and endured during the interval, and our own daily life, with its constant yet almost unnoticed changes, rises up before us in its united experience; so that a man sometimes needs to go away from home to see himself as he is and has been in his own home. There are few men who can look upon the form and feature of a score of years thus consolidated by distance without some grave thoughts upon life and its changes. We tremble, moreover, as we draw near the places and friends so long unvisited. We fear that we have been shaping an ideal world out of the materials stored up by our memory, and that things and persons will seem wholly strange to us. We fear that more friends than we have heard of have passed away, and that they who remain will not remember us as we remember them.
When our steamer drew near the city of L———, the spires of some of the churches were familiar to my eye, and the whole face of the country seemed to answer the absentee's grateful recognition. The city had more than doubled its population, and stretched itself out on either side of its domain; yet it had only grown in stature, without having essentially changed its features. The landing was crowded by the same motley throng as of old, and it is only when the stranger sees the new squares of stately houses in the remoter streets that he appreciates the growth and prosperity of the place. But what avails a familiar scene if there is no welcome from a familiar friend? It was somewhat remarkable that the first face that I recognized was that of the son of my kind host of former years, the good Judge; and it was cheering to learn, from our ready and mutual recognition, that Father Time had not so set his marks upon our features as to hide the familiar lineaments. In a half-hour, the hearty welcome from his sisters, two of whom kept house together in the city, was ample assurance that the light of other days had not died out, and that the father's kind heart still animated the children, even as when he was with them in the body. The welcome was not limited to the parlor, but came also from the tenants of the kitchen. The old farm-servants were not indeed there, and Morocco and Cato, with many of their associates, had gone
