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 after-years--whatever may be their successes, or their
honors--can never re-create. Under the roof-tree of his home the boy
feels SAFE: and where in the whole realm of life, with its
bitter toils and its bitterer temptations, will he feel _safe_ again?
But this you do not know. It seems only a grand old place; and it is
capital fun to search in its corners, and drag out some bit of quaint
old furniture, with a leg broken, and lay a cushion across it, and fix
your reins upon the lion's claws of the feet, and then--gallop away! And
you offer sister Nelly a chance, if she will be good; and throw out very
patronizing words to little Charlie, who is mounted upon a much humbler
horse,--to wit, a decrepit nursery-chair,--as he of right should be,
since he is three years your junior.
I know no nobler forage-ground for a romantic, venturesome, mischievous
boy, than the garret of an old family mansion on a day of storm.
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