own
around, as though they had been a light airy veil of mist; the green
meadows and hills of home, and its ruddy woods, lay spread around him
in the quiet sunshine of a beauteous autumn day; the nest of the stork
was empty, but ripe fruit still clung to the wild apple tree, although
the leaves, had fallen; the red hips gleamed, and the magpie whistled
in the green cage over the window of the peasant's cottage that was
his home; the magpie whistled the tune that had been taught him, and
the grandmother hung green food around the cage, as he, the grandson,
had been accustomed to do; and the daughter of the blacksmith, very
young and fair, stood by the well drawing water, and nodded to the
granddame, and the old woman nodded to her, and showed her a letter
that had come from a long way off. That very morning the letter had
arrived from the cold regions of the North--there where the grandson
was resting in the hand of God. And they smiled and they wept; and he,
far away among the ice and snow, under the pinions of the angel, he,
too, smiled and wept with them in spirit, for he saw them and heard
them. And from the letter they read aloud the words of Holy Writ, that
in the uttermost parts of the sea HIS right hand would be a stay and a
safety. And the sound of a beauteous hymn welled up all around; and
the angel spread his wings like a veil over the sleeping youth. The
vision had fled, and it grew dark in the snow hut; but the Bible
rested beneath his head, and faith and hope dwelt in his soul. God was
with him; and he carried home about with him in his heart, even in the
uttermost parts of the sea.

THE PHOENIX BIRD.

In the Garden of Paradise, beneath the Tree of Knowledge, bloomed a
rose bush. Here, in the first rose, a bird was born: his flight was
like the flashing of light, his plumage was beauteous, and his song
ravishing.

But when Eve plucked the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, when
she and Adam were driven from Paradise, there fell from the flaming
sword of the cherub a spark into the nest of the bird, which blazed up
forthwith. The bird perished in the flames; but from the red egg in
the nest there fluttered aloft a new one--the one solitary Phoenix
bird. The fable tells us that he dwells in Arabia, and that every year
he burns himself to death in his nest; but each time a new Phoenix,
the only one in the world, rises up from the red egg.

The bird flutters round us, swift as light, beauteou