"Lo! 0n a narrow neck of land 'Twixt two unbounded seas we stand, And cast a wishful eye."*

*[I am told, on good authority, that this last line of the threebelongs to another hymn. As it is just what I want to say, I'mgoing to let it stand as it is.]

If I remember right, the hymn went to the tune of "Ariel," and I cansee Harold Snodgrass, the precentor, sneaking a furtive C from hispitch-pipe, finding E flat and then sol, and standing up to lead thesinging, paddling the air gently with: Down, left, sing. Well, nomatter about that now. What I am trying to get at, is that we haveall a lost Eden in the past and a Paradise Regained in the future.'Twixt two unbounded seas of happiness we stand on the narrow andarid sand-spit of the present and cast a wishful eye. In hot weatherparticularly the wishful eye, when directed toward the lost Eden ofboyhood, lights on and lingers near the 0ld Swimming-hole.

I suppose boys do grow up into a reasonable enjoyment of theirfaculties in huge seaside cities and on inland farms where there isno accessible body of water larger than a wash-tub, but I prefer tobelieve that the majority of our adult male population in youth wentin swimming in the river up above the dam, where the huge sycamorespread out its roots a-purpose for them to climb out on withoutmuddying their feet. Some, I suppose, went in at the Copperas Banksfar below town, where the current had dug a hole that was "over head andarms," but that was pretty far and almost too army for the boysfrom across the tracks.