feet and
our wheels, making themselves so cheap in this perpetual martyrdom that
we forget each of them is a ray of the Divine beauty.

Yellow japanned buttercups and star-disked dandelions,--just as we see
them lying in the grass, like sparks that have leaped from the kindling
sun of summer; the profuse daisy-like flower which whitens the fields,
to the great disgust of liberal shepherds, yet seems fair to loving
eyes, with its button-like mound of gold set round with milk-white rays;
the tall-stemmed succory, setting its pale blue flowers aflame, one
after another, sparingly, as the lights are kindled in the candelabra
of decaying palaces where the heirs of dethroned monarchs are dying out;
the red and white clovers, the broad, flat leaves of the plantain,--"the
white man's foot," as the Indians called it,--the wiry, jointed stems of
that iron creeping plant which we call "knot-grass," and which loves its
life so dearly that it is next to impossible to murder it with a hoe,
as it clings to the cracks of the pavement;--all these plants, and many
more, she wove into her fanciful garlands and borders.--On one of the
pages were some musical notes. I touched them from curiosity on a piano
belonging to one of our boarders. Strange! There are passages that I
have heard before, plaintive, full of some hidden meaning, as if they
were gasping for words to interpret them. She must have heard the
strains that have so excited my curiosity, coming from my neighbor's
chamber. The illuminated border she had traced round the page that held
these notes took the place of the words they seemed to be aching for.
Above, a long monotonous sweep of waves, leaden-hued, anxious and jaded
and sullen, if you can imagine such an expression in water. On one side
an Alpine needle, as it were, of black basalt, girdled with snow. On the
other a threaded waterfall. The red morning-tint that shone in the drops
had a strange look,--one would say the cliff was bleeding;--perhaps she
did not mean it. Below, a stretch of sand, and a solitary bird of prey,
with his wings spread over some unseen object.--And on the very
next page a procession wound along, after the fashion of that on
the title-page of Fuller's "Holy War," in which I recognized without
difficulty every boarder at our table in all the glory of the most
resplendent caricature--three only excepted,--the Little Gentleman,
myself, and one other.

I confess I did expect to see something that would