Alas! alas, my poor uncle! how gladly would I resign every prospect my soldier's life may hold out, with all its glittering promise, and all the flattery of success, to be once more beside you; to feel your warm and manly grasp; to see your smile; to hear your voice; to be again where all our best feelings are born and nurtured, our cares assuaged, our joys more joyed in, and our griefs more wept,--at home! These very words have more music to my ears than all the softest strains that ever siren sung.

They bring us back to all we have loved, by ties that are never felt but through such simple associations.

And in the earlier memories called up, our childish feelings come back once more to visit us like better spirits, as we walk amidst the dreary desolation that years of care and uneasiness have spread around us.
Wretched must he be who ne'er has felt such bliss; and thrice happy he who, feeling it, knows that still there lives for him that same early home, with all its loved inmates, its every dear and devoted object waiting his coming and longing for his approach.
Such were my thoughts as I stood gazing at the bold line of coast now gradually growing more and more dim while evening fell, and we continued to stand farther out to sea.

So absorbed was I all this time in my reflections, that I never heard the voices which now suddenly burst upon my ears quite close beside me.

I turned, and saw for the first time that at the end of the quarter-deck stood what is called a roundhouse, a small cabin, from which the sounds in question proceeded.