se,--especially when she remembers that from time
immemorial sailors have had sweethearts in every port, and that her
spoiled pet of a brother is no exception to his race or his
profession."

He laughed, and smoothed her grizzled hair.

"Since my sapient sister is so curious, I will confess that once--and
only once in my life--I was in dire danger of falling most desperately
in love. The frigate was coaling at Palermo, and I went ashore. One
afternoon, in sauntering through the orange and lemon groves which
render its environs so inviting, I caught a glimpse of a countenance
so serene, so indescribably lovely, that for an instant I was disposed
to believe I had encountered the beatific spirit of St. Rosalie
herself. The face was that of a woman apparently about eighteen years
old, who evidently ranked among Sicilian aristocrats, and whose
elegant attire enhanced her beauty. I followed, at a respectful
distance, until she entered the garden of an adjacent convent and fell
on her knees before a marble altar, where burned a lamp at the feet of
a statue of the Virgin; and no painting in Europe stamped itself so
indelibly on my memory as the picture of that beautiful votary. Her
delicate hands were crossed over her heart,--her large, liquid, black
eyes, raised in adoration,--her full, crimson lips parted as she
repeated the '_Ave Maria_' in the most musical voice I ever heard.
Just above the purplish folds of her abundant hair drooped pomegranate
boughs all aflame with scarlet blooms that fell upon her head like
tongues of fire, as the wind sprang from the blue hollows of the
Mediterranean and shook the grove. The sun was going swiftly down
behind the stone turrets of a monastery that crowned a distant hill,
and the last rays wove an aureola around my kneeling saint, who,
doubtless, aware of the effect of her graceful attitudinizing, seemed
in no haste to conclude her devotions. As I recalled the charming
tableau, those lines wherein Buchanan sought to photograph the
picturesqueness of the Digentia, float up from some sympathetic cell
of memory,--

'Could you look at the leaves of yonder tree,--
The wind is stirring them, as the sun is stirring me!
The woolly clouds move quiet and slow
In the pale blue calm of the tranquil skies,
And their shades that run on the grass below
Leave purple dreams in the violet's eyes!
The vine droops over my head with bright
Clusters of purple and green,--the rose