ome particular flower nominated in the
cantata? And how, growing older and shyer, we still preserved our
youthful fancy even to the day I struck out into the world, both
believing in the endurance of the tie that would draw me back?
What caprice of fate is it that dispels the illusions of youth
and restores them tenfold in the reflection of after years and
over the gulf of the grave? Did I remember Sylvia?

Then Mary went on to tell me of Sylvia's happy marriage to George
Kinglake, how, when little Phyllis had come, and the world was
at its brightest, the parents had been stricken down in the same
week by a virulent disease, and how, with her dying breath, the
mother had asked her sister to look after her little one and
protect her from sorrow and harm. Very simply this stern-featured
woman told the story of her efforts to do her duty to her
sister's child, and it seemed to me that her face grew softer and
her voice gentler as she went over the years they had grown older
together, while the beauty of this woman's life was glorified by
the willing sacrifices of imposed motherhood. I could not see
Phyllis, for she was spending the night with friends in another
part of the village. Next time, she hoped, I might be more
successful.

Walking slowly to the tavern my mind still went back to my little
playmate and the golden days of youth, and if my heart grew a
little tenderer, and my eyes were moistened by the recall, what
need to be ashamed of the emotion? And if in the night I dreamed
that I was a boy again, and that a fair-haired child played with
me in the changing glow of dreamland in the best and purest
scenes of the human comedy, was it a delusion to be dispelled, a
memory to be put aside? Did I remember Sylvia?

The thought that my train was to leave at ten o'clock did not
depress me as I awoke, with the sunlight streaming through the
window, for, after all, I was obliged to admit that the monotony
of Meadowvale and the sluggishness of my village friends were
beginning to have an appreciable effect. Then the memory of
little Sylvia came to me again, and nothing seemed pleasanter, as
a benediction to the old days, than a visit to the burying-ground
where she was sleeping. The previous day I had paid the
obligations of remembrance and respect to the graves of
my kindred, and it gave me at first an uncomfortable feeling
to realize that the thought of them was less potent than
the recollection of this young gi