THE GARRET.

Happy the children who have inherited a garret! We mean the good
old country garret, wherein have been stowed away the accumulations
of many generations of careful housewives. The more worthless these
accumulations, the better for the children. An old aunt who saved all
the old bonnets, an old uncle who had a wardrobe of cast-off garments
to which he had appended the legend, “Too poor to wear, too good to give away--”

these are the purveyors to the histrionic talents of nations yet
unborn. Old garrets are really the factories of History, Poetry, and
the Drama.

Into such a garret crept the lame little Walter Scott, and what
did he not bring out of it! Talk of the lumber of a garret and the
accumulations of a house, and you mention to the thoughtful the gold
and diamond mines of a future literature. A bright boy or girl will
unearth many a pearl of price from those old trunks, those dilapidated
bureau-drawers, those piles of old love-letters, those garments of the
past, that broken-down guitar, that stringless violin, that too-reedy
flute. The taste for old furniture has rather emptied the garret of
its time-honored chairs and old clocks, but there is still in its
ghost-haunted corners quite enough goblin tapestry for the fancy of the
growing child.

A country home is, of course, the most precious possession a child can
have--a country home in which his ancestors have lived for years, and
which has a large garret, a capacious cellar, and several barns. One
might wish that every child might be born in Salem or Plymouth, or near
one of those old settlements. But as that would be quite impossible,
considering the acres which we are compelled to cover as a nation,
we may as well see what can be done, in the way of Home Amusements,
with the garret as well as the parlor. The garret, in both town and
country, has been the earliest home of the legitimate drama since the
first youthful aspirant for histrionic honors strapped on the sock and
buskin. A good country barn has also been sometimes the scene not only
of the strolling but of the resident player.