7] An illustrative trait
of what I have named as its cardinal point to him will fitly close my
account of its establishment. Its first number, still unpublished, had
not seemed to him quite to fulfil his promise, "tenderly to cherish the
light of fancy inherent in all breasts;" and, as soon as he received
the proof of the second, I heard from him. "Looking over the suggested
contents of number two at breakfast this morning" (Brighton: 14th of
March 1850) "I felt an uneasy sense of there being a want of something
tender, which would apply to some universal household knowledge. Coming
down in the railroad the other night (always a wonderfully suggestive
place to me when I am alone) I was looking at the stars, and revolving a
little idea about them. Putting now these two things together, I wrote
the enclosed little paper, straightway; and should like you to read it
before you send it to the printers (it will not take you five minutes),
and let me have a proof by return." This was the child's "dream of a
star," which opened his second number; and, not appearing among his
reprinted pieces, may justify a word or two of description. It is of a
brother and sister, constant child-companions, who used to make friends
of a star, watching it together until they knew when and where it would
rise, and always bidding it good-night; so that when the sister dies the
lonely brother still connects her with the star, which he then sees
opening as a world of light, and its rays making a shining pathway from
earth to heaven; and he also sees angels waiting to receive travellers
up that sparkling road, his little sister among them; and he thinks ever
after that he belongs less to the earth than to the star where his
sister is; and he grows up to youth and through manhood and old age,
consoled still under the successive domestic bereavements that fall to
his earthly lot by renewal of that vision of his childhood; until at
last, lying on his own bed of death, he feels that he is moving as a
child to his child-sister, and he thanks his heavenly father that the
star had so often opened before to receive the dear ones who awaited
him.

His sister Fanny and himself, he told me long before this paper was
written, used to wander at night about a churchyard near their house,
looking up at the stars; and her early death, of which I am now to
speak, had vividly reawakened all the childish associations which made
her memory dear to him.

FOOTNOTES: