u would have asked her."

Two happier young people than Therese and myself never, I am confident,
returned by rail from a day's excursion in the country. Our happy faces,
our rapid talking, and our devotion to each other, which we took no
pains to conceal, attracted the attention of all about us,--and I heard
one father of a family, who was returning to Paris with a half score of
cross, tired, and crying children, whisper to his wife, as he pointed
towards us,--"That is a couple in their honey-moon, or else lovers; how
happy they are!"

And that is the way in which I stumbled into wedlock. How many others,
in their pursuit of what has seemed to them the substance, have failed
to discover, perhaps too late, that they were following a flitting
shadow,--while I, favored mortal, in my chase of a dream, stumbled upon
the greatest real good of my whole life!

* * * * *

THROUGH THE FIELDS TO SAINT PETER'S.

There's a by-road to Saint Peter's. First you swing across the Tiber
In a ferry-boat that floats you in a minute from the crowd;
Then through high-hedged lanes you saunter; then by fields and sunny
pastures;
And beyond, the wondrous dome uprises like a golden cloud.

And this morning,--Easter morning,--while the streets were thronged
with people,
And all Rome moved toward the Apostle's temple by the usual way,
I strolled by the fields and hedges,--stopping now to view the
landscape,
Now to sketch the lazy cattle in the April grass that lay.

Galaxies of buttercups and daisies ran along the meadows,--
Rosy flushes of red clover,--blossoming shrubs and sprouting vines;
Overhead the larks were singing, heeding not the bells a-ringing,--
Little knew they of the Pasqua, or the proud Saint Peter's shrines.

Contadini, men and women, in their very best apparel,
Trooping one behind another, chatted all along the roads;
Boys were pitching quoits and coppers; old men in the sun were basking:
In the festive smile of Heaven all laid aside their weary loads.

Underneath an ancient portal, soon I passed into the city;
Entered San Pietro's Square, now thronged with upward crowding forms;
Past the Cardinals' gilded coaches, and the gorgeous scarlet lackeys,
And the flashing files of soldiers, and black priests in gloomy swarms.

All were moving to the temple. Push aside the ponderous curtain!
Lo! the glorious heights of marble, melting