l be only thought.

As it is, I can conceive no mood of mind more in keeping with what is to
follow upon the grave, than those fancies which warp our frail hulks
toward the ocean of the Infinite, and that so sublimate the realities of
this being, that they seem to belong to that shadowy realm whither every
day's journey is leading.

--It was warm weather, and my aunt was dozing. "What is this all to be
about?" said she, recovering her knitting-needle.

"About love, and toil, and duty, and sorrow," said I.

My aunt laid down her knitting, looked at me over the rim of her
spectacles, and--took snuff.

I said nothing.

"How many times have you been in love, Isaac?" said she.

It was now my turn to say, "Pshaw!"

Judging from her look of assurance, I could not possibly have made a
more satisfactory reply.

My aunt finished the needle she was upon, smoothed the stocking-leg over
her knee, and looking at me with a very comical expression, said, "Isaac,
you are a sad fellow!"

I did not like the tone of this; it sounded very much as if it would
have been in the mouth of any one else--"bad fellow."

And she went on to ask me, in a very bantering way, if my stock of
youthful loves was not nearly exhausted; and she cited the episode of
the fair-haired Enrica, as perhaps the most tempting that I could draw
from my experience.

A better man than myself, if he had only a fair share of vanity, would
have been nettled at this; and I replied somewhat tartly, that I had
never professed to write my experiences. These might be more or less
tempting; but certainly if they were of a kind which I have attempted to
portray in the characters of Bella, or of Carry, neither my Aunt Tabithy
nor any one else should have learned such truth from any book of mine.
There are griefs too sacred to be babbled to the world; and there may be
loves which one would forbear to whisper even to a friend.

No, no; imagination has been playing pranks with memory; and if I have
made the feeling real, I am content that the facts should be false.
Feeling, indeed, has a higher truth in it than circumstance. It appeals
to a larger jury for acquittal; it is approved or condemned by a better
judge. And if I can catch this bolder and richer truth of feeling, I
will not mind if the types of it are all fabrications.

If I run over some sweet experience of love, (my Aunt Tabithy brightened
a little,) must I make good the fact that the loved one lives, and