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"My life have I spent in devising means for injuring my tormentors and their race. My Spirit shall work out my plans.

"I have lived out the measure of my days, and have wrought misery to my Persecutors. Now I have come back to die; but, that future generations may know that I torment them, I will conceal my plans till the time shall come for their fulfillment. Then shall I have my revenge.

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"I will dwell in North College-yea, among the vermin of the attic shall be my abode. My Spirit shall commune with the Faculty, and I will be as one of them. Thus shall my revenge be sweet. I will posI will whisper suspicions against the innocent, for even so was I treated. I will suggest systems of marks and letters, of admonitions and warnings. Above all, will I put it in their heads to contrive biennial examinations; fearful and destructive shall they be, yea, the curse of curses.

"And I will kindle feuds among the Students, and mar their pleasures. I will put it in the hearts of wicked men to war against and destroy them (Here much was illegible.) Thus will I have revenge

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upon my foes, even the race of my tormentors."

As I read amazement gave way to terror, at the conviction that the very College in which I lived and slept, was haunted by a Fiend-the thought that perhaps he often stood at my bedside, at midnight, concocting his dreadful designs. I recalled the many noises I had heard, my troubled dreams, and strange sights attributed to imagination. Now all was reality-a dreadful truth. The very mouse that led to the discovery might have been, nay, more probably was, the Fiend himself. Reader-have you ever slept a night in North College? Did you ever hear a soft footstep, and a noise of gentle movement by your door? If so, you have heard the tramp of the Evil Genius of Yale.

Dreaming.

"I had a dream, which was not all a dream."

How natural and delightful it is to-day to dream. It is a calm, clear morning, bright as sunlight can make it, full of gladness and joy. The almanac calls it Wednesday, January 27th, but earth and sky together

declare it is May. The skies of Italy cannot be more beautiful, and the air that floats in at our open window is as sweet and mild as the breath of the Gulf Stream on the shores of Florida. It is delicious to live to. day. Simple, passive existence, unmolested and free, is all the heart desires. There are times when winds roar, storms rage, and all the elements are at war, in which a man longs to grapple some labor, to struggle with difficulty, to bear responsibility, to summon his energy to work and display his positive force in some direction. But when such a day as this comes, a harbinger of Spring, a messenger from the Tropics, a visitor from the land of spices and palms, we are content simply to be, and by the quiet enjoyment of his presence, welcome the stranger as a friend. Whether from our window, looking forth upon the glory of the scene, or walking abroad in its midst, gladly we entertain the multitude of strange, fanciful dreams which the full harmony of nature suggests and cherishes. Our thoughts need no control. Abandonment is our feeling, and our meditations are at random. Swiftly and silently the hours tread their way to their never-ending rest in the Past, and as they go, every one bestows its blessing. Visions of fond hopes realized, aspirations fulfilled, and longings satisfied, rise into view, all permeated and pervaded with the wonderful beauty of the day.

In such moods as these, we often grow more in an hour than in weeks of common plodding life. Do you say it is of no use, there is no useful knowledge acquired, no discipline gained? Away with your cold practicalities, with your chilling utilitarianism, "come not anear." As well rebuke a man for his dreams by night, as for his reveries by day. It is a delightful and beneficent provision of our nature, that when our slumber is not profound, dull Reason may step aside and Fancy, wild and free, work fantastic wonders for our amusement. For our departure from life, we ask nothing more peaceful than Bryant's picture of

-"him who wraps the drapery of his couch

About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams."

Say nothing against them. Were not dreams the messengers of God to man? Are the good times all gone? No, others besides Jacob may see the ladder reaching from earth to heaven, and the angels ascending and descending on it. If your dreams are bad, it is because your life is

not pure.

But visions of the night are not happier than those of the day, for in the latter we behold what we please. When the body is exhausted with labor, and the brain has been racked with exertion, when the heart

is wearied with anxiety and worn with care, it is a calm, deep joy to lose ourself in vague reverie of sweet possibilities.' When discouragement, like a cloud, hangs over the horizon, it is in dreams that hope is brightened to come forth as the sun. Here purposes are strengthened.

There are certain hours of the day, and seasons of the year, and to every one particular spots on the earth, when and where these dreams are especially fond of coming. At twilight, when the Sun hides his departure behind a curtain of gold, and Night solemnly lifts her sceptre upon the world, a man's spirit is open to every suggestion of Fancy, and is glad to look upon the ideal of everything the day has not made real. We envy the shepherds of the East, who, surrounded by their flocks, spend their nights gazing in silence upon the sky. To such came the heavenly message, "on earth peace, good will to men." At evening we love to look upon the embers on the hearth, and build up there what we please. Now we live in the middle ages, and behold a castle with its walls and towers. Again, it is the seventeenth century, and there is a ship laden with wealth from the Indies. Later and better, it is a cottage on a New England hill-side-our future home. Surrounded by trees, the home of singing birds, by fountains and flowers,—it is delightful without, but happier within. Be assured, reader, we live there not alone.

But to the student, of all dreamy times vacation is the best. Then loosened from all restraint, with no demands for exertion upon him, relaxation is full and complete. The mind wanders freely where it will. The merely practical man is bound to the present, but the dreamer is confined within the limits of neither time nor space. He is a citizen of the world. In the visions of his idle hours, memories of the by-gone are mingled with the unsatisfied longings of the present and hopeful promises that look to coming years for their fulfillment.

Of all places promotive and suggestive of dreams, the best is homethe home of our childhood. As we approach it, every rock and every old tree is a remembrancer of innocent and tender days-the vestibule to every human life. We go home to visit our friends, but beside this to see ourselves. No spot is unvisited. We roam over the house from top to bottom, entering every room, looking into every closet and corner. We are living our childhood over again. In one room we always linger. There stood the sick bed-no matter when, we see it now-of one whose life the physicians declared to be near its end. She was ready, and but for her two boys, willing to die. We hear her now-those grieving, anxious words, too sacred to be written here. A few mornings

after, when we woke, our brother told us we were without a mother-the saddest thing to a child or his home. The funeral came. We did not know its sorrowful meaning fully, yet it was to us strangely and wofully solemn. Every time we go home we go through the experience again. Those last words of anxiety and blessing have lost none of their power, but have acted always as a charm to drive away evil. In how many crises have they withheld us from ruin-entering into all our plans for life. As we dream of that departed mother, we are not the young man forming our own plans, but the little boy, six years old, to whom her word and wish are law. Thus by our reveries we gather up the wealth of our experience, and grow strong both to work and endure. We make certain places rich with the affections we lavish upon them. If we ever travel through lands fraught with classic and sacred associations, we shall never find a place we can love like our New England home. Aye, if we ever come to the spot where He suffered who suffered for all, we caunot more deeply worship than when we stand beside our mother's grave. HERE, too, was a cross uplifted for us. Dreams idealize the heart's longings-the longings of the human heart, which ever craves more. What one wishes for most earnestly, in his reveries he sees realized. This is a most happy experience, but a man is never content with it. Visions of fulfilled hope urge him on to make his ideal real. Napoleon, the boy, with his little cannon, imagined himself vanquishing his foes. There was no rest to that spirit till the dream was made a fact.

Dreams indicate character. They are mirrors which reflect the general tenor of a man's thought and feeling. The epicure sees himself at a delicious banquet. The ambitious man in his dreams sways the people, is delighted with their applause and his fame-the artist succeeds in portraying upon canvas his cherished ideal, and the natural philosopher in explaining perplexing phenomena. We all have our characteristic reveries. If they are not excellent, the fault is in ourselves. When exciting circumstances carry the mind out of its usual course, its dreams follow. The anxious mother dreams night and day of her sick child. In his reveries the lover has but one idea, sees only one being-it is the loved.

But to us dreams have a deeper meaning than this. They are the promises of a sublime future. Surely, the heart whose hopes have impelled the imagination to such creations, is not doomed to the disappointment of never seeing its fancies realized or equaled. If a man dream anything noble or exalted, he has implicit faith that at some time and in some way he shall meet it. Whence this faith except from his

Maker, who will perform his promises? The fact is, this aspiring, human soul, in the present life finds itself fettered, hedged about, walled. in, with none of its highest conceptions attained. But to us there is a hopeful and happy belief, that the loftiest of our present visions are low to the experience of a future existence that may be attained by all.

S. H. L.

Book Notice.

The New Englander for February. For sale at College Book Store, 155 D. C. THE New Englander has come to us in such shape that it is a pleasure to read and recommend it. It is in excellent dress, commending itself to the eye by its mechanical perfection. With clear, large print and good paper, it presents a page which it is a luxury to look upon. Nor are appearances deceitful. The matter is of the same substantial nature as the manner, well worthy to be offered in the most attractive form. The expectation warranted by the November issue, that its new proprietor would give the Magazine newness of life, and raise it to the foremost rank of American Quarterlies, is fully realized in this Number for February.

The first Article, from the pen of our Pastor, discusses the question, "Is Protestantisin responsible for modern unbelief?" The charge that the freedom of thought, which Protestantism brought into the world, is the guilty cause of "modern unbelief," is refuted by an appeal to the origin and nature of the Reformation, taking the character, works and words of Luther, as an exponent of the purposes and results of that greatest of modern revolutions. The prevailing unbelief is traced to Germany-to the idealistic, spiritualistic tendencies of the German. mind to the characteristic desire of that nation to solve all the problems that can occur to man-to compass the Infinite by the finite, which naturally strikes out a personal Infinite Being and ends in Pantheism. The discussion is very instructive, to any one interested in the progress of ideas, within the last two centuries.

Article second is by Dr. Daggett, of Canandaigua, on "Spurgeon and Extemporaneous Preaching." Overlcoking the many faults of taste and occasional errors of judgment, charged against Spurgeon-a young man, younger than many students in Yale College-the writer

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