re crouched in the corner, huddled up like those
Indian mummies and skeletons found buried in the sitting posture,
to lift its hand,--look upon its heart, and behold, not fire, but
ashes.--No, I must not think of such an ending! Dying would be a
much more gentlemanly way of meeting the difficulty. Make a will
and leave her a house or two and some stocks, and other little
financial conveniences, to take away her necessity for keeping
school.--I wonder what nice young man's feet would be in my French
slippers before six months were over! Well, what then? If a man
really loves a woman, of course he wouldn't marry her for the
world, if he were not quite sure that he was the best person she
could by any possibility marry.

--It is odd enough to read over what I have just been writing.--It
is the merest fancy that ever was in the world. I shall never be
married. She will; and if she is as pleasant as she has been so
far, I will give her a silver tea-set, and go and take tea with her
and her husband, sometimes. No coffee, I hope, though,--it
depresses me sadly. I feel very miserably;--they must have been
grinding it at home.--Another morning walk will be good for me, and
I don't doubt the schoolmistress will be glad of a little fresh air
before school.

--The throbbing flushes of the poetical intermittent have been
coming over me from time to time of late. Did you ever see that
electrical experiment which consists in passing a flash through
letters of gold-leaf in a darkened room, whereupon some name or
legend springs out of the darkness in characters of fire?

There are songs all written out in my soul, which I could read, if
the flash might pass through them,--but the fire must come down
from heaven. Ah! but what if the stormy nimbus of youthful passion
has blown by, and one asks for lightning from the ragged cirrus of
dissolving aspirations, or the silvered cumulus of sluggish
satiety? I will call on her whom the dead poets believed in, whom
living ones no longer worship,--the immortal maid, who, name her
what you will,--Goddess, Muse, Spirit of Beauty,--sits by the
pillow of every youthful poet, and bends over his pale forehead
until her tresses lie upon his cheek and rain their gold into his
dreams.

MUSA.

O my lost Beauty!--hast thou folded quite
Thy wings of morning light
Beyond those iron gates
Where Life crowds hurrying to the haggard Fates,
And Age upon his mound of ashes waits
To chill our