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on the skirts of the forest. Here our leader halted, and then advanced quietly to a low bush, on the top of which I perceived a piece of honey-comb. This I found was the bait or lure for the wild bees. Several were humming about it, and diving into its cells. When they had laden themselves with honey, they would rise into the air, and dart off in a straight line, almost with the velocity of a bullet. The hunters watched attentively the course they took, and then set off in the same direction, stumbling along over twisted roots. and fallen trees, with their eyes turned up to the sky. In this way they traced the honey-laden bees to their hive, in the hollow trunk of a blasted oak, where, after buzzing about for a moment, they entered a hole about sixty feet from the ground.

Two of the bee-hunters now plied their axes vigorously at the foot of the tree, to level it with the ground. The mere spectators and amateurs, in the mean time, drew off to a cautious distance, to be out of the way of the falling of the tree and the vengeance of its inmates. The jarring blows of the axe seemed to have no effect in alarming or disturbing this most industrious community. They continued to ply at their usual occupations, some arriving full freighted into port, others sallying forth on new expeditions, like so many merchantmen in a money-making metropolis, little suspicious of impending bankruptcy and downfall. Even a load crack, which announced the disrupture of the trunk, failed to divert their attention from the intense pursuit of gain. At length down came the tree with a tremendous crash, bursting open from end to end, and displaying all the hoarded treasures of the commonwealth.

One of the hunters immediately ran up with a wisp of lighted hay as a defence against the bees. The latter, however, made no attack, and sought no revenge: they seemed stupefied by the catastrophe, and unsuspicious of its cause, and remained crawling and buzzing about the ruins without offering us any molestation. Every one of the party now fell

to, with spoon and hunting-knife, to scoop out the flakes of honey-comb with which the hollow trunk was stored. Some of them were of old date, and a deep brown color; others were beautifully white; and the honey in their cells was almost limpid. Such of the combs as were entire were placed in camp kettles, to be conveyed to the encampment; those which had shivered in the fall were devoured upon the spot. Every stark bee-hunter was to be seen with a rich morsel in his hand, dripping about his fingers, and disappearing as rapidly as a cream tart before the holiday appetite of a schoolboy.

Nor was it the bee-hunters alone that profited by the downfall of this industrious community. As if the bees would carry through the similitude of their habits with those of laborious and gainful man, I beheld numbers from rival hives, arriving on eager wing, to enrich themselves with the ruins of their neighbors. These busied themselves as eagerly and cheerfully as so many wreckers on an Indiaman that has been driven on shore; plunging into the cells of the broken honey-combs, banqueting greedily on the spoil, and then winging their way full freighted to their homes. As to the poor proprietors of the ruin, they seemed to have no heart to do any thing, not even to taste the nectar that flowed around them, but crawled backwards and forwards, in vacant desolation, as I have seen a poor fellow with his hands in his breeches pocket, whistling vacantly and despondingly about the ruins of his house that had been burnt.

It is difficult to describe the bewilderment and confusion of the bees of the bankrupt hive who had been absent at the time of the catastrophe, and who arrived from time to time, with full cargoes from abroad. At first they wheeled about in the air, in the place where the fallen tree had once reared its head, astonished at finding it all a vacuum. At length, as if comprehending their disaster, they settled down in clusters on a dry branch of a neighboring tree, from whence they seemed to contemplate the prostrate ruin, and to buzz forth doleful lamentations over the downfall of their republic.

LESSON LXV.

EXERCISES IN ARTICULATION.

Burn, burn'd, burn'dst, burns, burn'st, usurps, usurp, usurp'd, horse, harsh, burst, bursts.

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LET the young go out, in these hours, under the descending sun of the year, into the fields of nature. Their hearts are now ardent with hope,—with the hopes of fame, of honor, or of happiness; and in the long perspective which is before them, their imagination creates a world where all may be enjoyed. Let the scenes which they now may witness moderate, but not extinguish, their ambition. While they see the yearly desolation of nature, let them see it as the emblem of mortal hope; while they feel the disproportion between the powers they possess and the time they are to be employed, let them carry their ambitious eye beyond the world; and while, in these sacred solitudes, a voice in their own bosom corresponds to the voice of decaying nature, let them take that high decision which becomes those who feel themselves the inhabitants of a greater world, and who look to a being incapable of decay.

Let the busy and the active go out, and pause for a time amid the scenes which surround them, and learn the high lesson which nature teaches in the hours of its fall. They are now ardent with all the desires of mortality; and fame, and interest, and pleasure, are displaying to them their shadowy promises; and, in the vulgar race of life, many weak and many worthless passions are too naturally engendered. Let them withdraw themselves for a time from the agitations of the world; let them mark the desolation of summer, and listen to the winds of winter, which begin to murmur above their heads. It is a scene which, with all

its power, has yet no reproach. It tells them, that such is also the fate to which they must come; that the pulse of passion must one day beat low; that the illusions of time must pass; and that." the spirit must return to Him who gave it." It reminds them, with gentle voice, of that innocence in which life was begun, and for which no prosperity of vice can make any compensation; and that angel who is one day to stand upon the earth, and to swear that time shall be no more," seems now to whisper to them, amid the hollow winds of the year, what manner of men they ought to be who must meet that decisive hour.

There is an eventide in human life, a season when the eye becomes dim and the strength decays, and when the winter of age begins to shed upon the human head its prophetic snow. It is the season of life to which the present is most analogous; and much it becomes, and much it would profit you, to mark the instructions which the season brings. The spring and the summer of your days are gone, and with them, not only the joys they knew, but many of the friends who gave them. You have entered upon the autumn of your being, and whatever may have been the profusion of your spring, or the warm intemperance of your summer, there is yet a season of stillness and of solitude which the beneficence of Heaven affords you, in which you may meditate upon the past and the future, and prepare yourselves for the mighty change which you are soon to undergo.

If it be thus you have the wisdom to use the decaying. season of nature, it brings with it consolations more valuable than all the enjoyments of former days. In the long retrospect of your journey, you have seen, every day, the shades of the evening fall, and every year, the clouds of winter gather. But you have seen also, every succeeding day, the morning arise in its brightness, and in every succeeding year, the spring return to renovate the winter of nature. is now you may understand the magnificent language of Heaven. it mingles its voice with that of revelation; it

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summons you, in these hours when the leaves fall, and the winter is gathering, to that evening study which the mercy of Heaven has provided in the book of salvation; and while the shadowy valley opens which leads to the abode of death, it speaks of that hand which can comfort and can save, and which can conduct to those "green pastures, and those still waters," where there is an eternal spring for the children of God.

LESSON LXVI.

EXERCISES IN ARTICULATION.

Hurt, hurts, hurt'st, hearth, hearths, march, march'd, deservcs, deserv'd, deserv'dst, deserves, deserv'st, fears.

Thanksgiving.

THANKSGIVING!

JOSEPH T. BUCKINGHAM.

-There is a magic in the sound of the word, which calls up from the grave of years the shadows of departed pleasures, breathes upon them the breath of life, fills them with their original attributes, decorates them again with the freshness of reality, and bids them move before the enraptured imagination, a long and gay procession of images, reflecting the innocence of childhood, the generous affection of youth, and the fervency and faithfulness of that unsophisticated and momentary interval, which precedes the entrance on the scenes of business and bustle, of anxiety and calculation, of cold-hearted indifference, of selfish distrust, and, perhaps, of treacherous friendship and insidious hypocrisy.

First in the smiling pageant approaches the child, rich -O how rich, beyond the wealth of princes!-in the possession of its primers and playthings, wondering why all the bustle of preparation for the feast, and inquiring, with characteristic simplicity, the meaning of the unusual prodigality and ceremony which every where meet and enchant its un

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