and is going home with his horses, while others have already finished their suppers. There is still some cider running from the previous making. This is free to all; and well do the boys enjoy it, while the evening is spent tossing about on the straw, and racing, by long circles, through the meadow. These are the smaller boys-and these are their sports in cider-making time.

Where are the boys of larger growth? They have all been invited to a neighbor's house to "an apple-butter boiling." All the young men and maidens of the neighborhood are gathered there. The severe labors of the day do not unfit them for enjoying this scene of youthful festivity. The horses and cattle attended to, supper over, every-day clothes doffed, the Sunday suit is put on-and away!

Two

Do we transfer ourselves to the place, and what do we see. large kettles filled with cider have already been over fire since morning.

"Two great cauldrons o'er the fire,

Whilst on huge crane stretched from jamb to jamb,

Wide as a gate that lets the chariot pass,

Swing over the blaze with cider streaming hot,

Where the brown stirrer with its handle long

A ceaseless motion keeps."

The apples to be pealed are in large tubs, waiting for the company. The young folks begin to drop in one by one, and fall earnestly to work; for the sooner the peeling is done the sooner will playing commence. Therefore thanks to that ambitious young man who comes there with a peeling machine. He is invited to every party of the kind in the whole neighborhood. Let it not be thought that he is merely welcome because of his machine and its great usefulness; for this itself is only a fruit of his general generous disposition. Every one likes him, for he is always useful, and agreeable, and kind. See how he spins the blushing apple, and whirls it peeled into the tub. The poet must have seen this performance:

"Swift flies the apple to the paring blade,

While like a serpent falls the coiling peel."

The cider in the kettles is now ready to receive the cut apples, and they are accordingly poured in. But now stirring must also begin; and to this end one of the ladies must leave the apple-cutting party to stirbut not alone! Some one of the young men thinks, and says too, that it is too hard work for her alone. Kind-hearted, charitable, thoughtful young man! He flies to her assistance; and now with the sweep of the stirring movement there is caused also, or at least cultivated, a kind of harmony of hearts, which makes the moments fly swiftly and sweetly. They scarcely thank the lady who comes to relieve them; for she takes his place, as it would not be modest to take her's. But now, it is not right to let two ladies perform that tedious work alone. See a kindhearted youth goes to relieve the first, out of pure pity, of course. So the changing goes on-each in turn relieved, and each in turn pleased to afford the relief.

Meantime the apple-peeling is over. The young people are not all needed to stir the kettles. What now? There is a youth-well he knows how to "begin the plays." We must not be asked to describe them, for almost all but the pleasant general recollection of them has

passed from our memory. The majority of them are of the most simple and innocent character-and not one of them half so foolish as dancing about on one foot then upon another; now, as if there were a thorn in one's toe, and then as if it were in the heel, bobbing up and down, like a cork when the fish bites, and then turning to one side and looking so languishing and interesting, so very beautiful, tender and sentimental with "love and longing." Not half so childish as this is any one of the apple-butter party plays that we have ever seen in the rural districts of Pennsylvania. The attachments that are cultivated in this kind of innocent country life are, we are sure, generally more virtuous and lasting, and oftener followed by a life of true social happiness than any that are formed amid the hot-bed sentimentalism of the ball room.

In these innocent rural parties no young lady is in danger of catching a pennyless, brainless, characterless fop, being distinguished only for his smart small talk, his nice clothes, and his unpaid tailor bill-one who is much more impressed with the praise of his moustache, than with the earnest duns of his poor washerwoman. Here an industrious, earnest young man is not in danger of being entangled in misery for life by a soft Miss, who can indeed "trip it gaily on the fantastic toe," talk languishingly, sigh to the moon, but knows not how to bake a loaf, sweep a room, or mend a garment. Such love and such gentlemen and ladies would do well enough for husbands and wives if houses had nothing but parlors in them, if love indeed were a dream, and the duties and trials of life only fancy and fun.

This seems to be a digression; but we hope it has legitimately grown out of our subject. Let it be regarded in the light of a moral attached to the tale we tell.

Early autumn brings with it many other rural delights, and innocent pastimes for country youth which poets have sung, and which moralists have not felt it necessary to rebuke or demolish. Nor do they painfully afflict the memories of those who shared in them in "boyhood's halcyon days."

"See where the joyous Hollow-eve comes in,
And how the country is awaked to mirth!
While, far and near, the sleepless watch dog's bark
Responds from farm to farm, till oft the wife
Starts from her couch to peer with anxious eye;
Or, on her troubled pillow, dreams of harm
In cabbage plots or poultry sheds sustained."

Gradually, and more and more keenly are these days of calm, sunny quietness succeeded by nights of frost and cold. Dark clouds are in the heavens, and black shadows are on the fields and mountains. It must be so to protect the wheat from the fly, to ripen the whole family of nuts, and to prepare for winter.

"It is the season when the woodland trees,

Through yellow fingers, shed the plenteous nuts;
When happy children, from the school released,
Wander from grove to grove. Canst thou not yet
Bring back to fancy those departed days
When we, together, with our baskets went,
Shelling the walnuts till our little hands
Where like the autumn's brown?

Or chestnuts found

Dropped from their starry burrs? or with the squirrels
Beneath the hickory, shared the shellbark's store?
How then we spread them in the loft to dry,
Between the rolls of wool for winter wheels-
The loft made odorous by the bundled herbs?
Ah, yes, thou needs must often see it all,

And seeing, sigh for the delightful hours.”

Thus, and with equal beauty of other such-like things has READ very naturally and touchingly sung in his "New Pastoral"-not only a truly American, but a truly Pennsylvanian poem. Blessings always on the man who records the innocent pleasures of our own rural life, even as they are blest who bear the memory of them in their hearts.

KNOWLEDGE AND BERRIES.

BY THE EDITOR.

KNOWLEDGE, like wealth, is gathered by steady habits of economycarefully retaining what we have, and gathering more, little by little. Every opportunity must be improved. We must increase our stock of permanent information on every occasion. We must learn from every man, and from every thing-not overlooking opportunities that seem small in themselves.

To learn Though a

There is much in the way we take to secure the end. always, and from every thing, and in every place is an art. simple art, it is not learned by every one. Lately we went with a company into the mountain to gather whortleberries. When we got to the place where they were to be gathered, we struck in from the road, and sure enough there they were. Some stocks were pretty full; but upon the whole they seemed rather thinly covered with berries. Great success seemed rather improbable here. Yet there was one in the company who went right to work-moving on steadily, and gathering them into the basket. We moved on to find places where the bushes would hang full! There is no use, we thought, of spending time where they are not more abundant. The result was that the full places, as we expected to find them, were not forthcoming; and while we fooled our time away the other person filled his basket. When we got back to the general meeting place and compared baskets, we saw clearly that it was not by picking out full places, but by picking berries that the baskets were to be filled. We thought of the Irishman who had heard that this new country over the water abounded in money, and that it could be gotten by handfulls; when he left the ship he happened to see a dollar, which some one had lost, lying in the street, whereupon he exclaimed in contempt: "Faith, an do ye think I'll stop to pick ye up! Nare a bit of it. I'll ga right ane till I come to the hapes!" It is scarcely necessary to say that he did not find the "heaps," even as we did not find the "full places" of berries; and as he found his pocket empty of the dollar

which he did not pick up because it was only one, so we found our basket empty of the berries which we did not gather because they did not hang so thickly on the bushes as we desired.

As the berries did not make our basket look bluer, we resolved that the experience, with the recollection of the similar folly of the Irishman, should make us wiser for the future. So now when we go forth to gather knowledge we do not seek the full places, or wait till we come to the heap, but we go right to work, picking up little by little as we find it scattered along our path. We have no doubt that the proverb will prove true that "many a little makes a mickle;" and after awhile we will see that what was gathered grain by grain will fill a storehouse, and do to live on.

Furthermore, having gathered this wisdom-not the berries in the mountains, and having gotten it without cost, except ending the little mortification of being laughed at by our companions, we now communicate it, and earnestly recommend it to the young readers of The Guardian. Remember that every berry in the basket, even when it is picked where they thinly hang, is there, and is so much towards filling it. So every little item of knowledge secured and fastened in its place is there for future use, and does its part toward making you a wise man.

When I see a young man who professes to desire knowledge inattentive when wise men are speaking, or spending a little leisure hour in folly, fun, or idleness, because it is but a little hour, instead of using it in reading a useful book or periodical, I say to myself he is holding up for the "full places," or waiting till he gets to the "heap." When others are wise, he will be walking about with an empty head, seeking knowledge and finding none; always trying to learn, and wishing to learn, but never coming to the knowledge of anything.

Many little dewdrops,

Freshen all the plain;
And the little floating mists
Make the shower of rain.
By many little crumblets

The fowls are fat and fed:
So many little ideas

Fill the largest head.

If any of our young readers have hitherto belonged to the class described we commend to them this little song. We have written it for their special benefit, and it is herewith dedicated to them. They may sing it for pastime while they are in search of the "full places," and are traveling towards the "heap."

FRIENDSHIP.

THERE is a charm in beauty's smile;
There is a thrilling magic power,

To soften sorrow, and beguile

The dark gloom of misfortune's hour.

But there's a sweeter, holier tie,

Which wavers not, nor knows decay!
That tie is Friendship-heavenly power!
Which brighter glows from day to day.

FALL OF THE CHARTER OAK.

"A dirge, a dirge for the brave old oak,
That helped to make us free!

Let the vallies ring with the echo woke
By a dirge for the fallen tree !"

THE famous old Charter Oak of Hartford, Connecticut, so noted in song and history, fell with a tremendous crash during the great storm, at a quarter before one o'clock this morning, August 21, 1856.

This noble old tree stood upon the beautiful grounds of Hon. Isaac W. Stuart, late the Wylys' estate, in the southern part of the city. About three years ago some boys built a fire in the hollow of this tree, which burnt out the punk, and though it was feared that this would kill it, such was not the fact. Fresh sprouts sprung out the next spring, and Mr. Stuart took great pains to preserve this valued relic of the original forest to New England, but more especially interesting as the tree in which the old British charter of Connecticut was secreted and preserved. At this time the hollow in the trunk of the old oak was so large that a fire company of twenty-seven full-grown men stood up in it together.

Mr. Stuart had a stout door made to shut up the entrance, and he also placed tin caps upon the stumps of broken limbs, and for the past three or four years, fresh sprouts have grown upon most of its limbs, though other limbs were decaying. At the time of its fall, young and fresh acorns were growing on every part of it. Thousands of people are visiting the tree, and bringing away such sprigs and parts of limbs as Mr. Stuart permits.

Watchman Butler says he stood at the head of the street at the time of the crash. The wind had been blowing freshly from the northwest for an hour or more. He first heard a loud crack, and saw the Old Oak swaying in the breeze; a cracking noise followed, then the crash-all within the space of half a minute-and the famous monarch of the forest, whose history is so intimately entwined in that of Connecticut, was prostrate upon the earth! One thousand years ago, when it was in the prime of life when its years were half numbered, its far reaching branches had sported in fiercer storms, and more swift-winged wind: But now, since full two thousand years have smiled and waned upon its youth, its prime, and its decline, it had become gray and decrepid, but it was still tenacious of its reaching roots, running a long way up into the beautiful hill side, and downward to the sharp cut below. Firmly, aye, proudly the Oak stood, seemingly conscious that nature had marked out for its own accommodation one of the most enchanting retreats in the State, and that destiny had accorded to it a notable and everlasting historic page in the story of Connecticut-one of the patriotic and original thirteen States of the Union.

Proudly it had stood, and when tottering with age, and reduced to a mere shell of a few inches, by the steady inroads of time itself, it still clung with fondness to the loved spot on which it had witnessed the decay and downfall of many of its associates-the path and the bloody