t turned
away, and gave himself up to a sort of vague reverie, which he called
thought. Sometimes he watched the moon, pouring a silvery liquid on the
clouds, through which it slowly melted till they became all bright;
then he saw the same sweet radiance dancing on the leafy trees which
rustled as if to shake it off, or sleeping on the high tops of hills,
or hovering down in distant valleys, like the material of unshaped
dreams; lastly, he looked into the spring, and there the light was
mingling with the water. In its crystal bosom, too, beholding all
heaven reflected there, he found an emblem of a pure and tranquil
breast. He listened to that most ethereal of all sounds, the song of
crickets, coming in full choir upon the wind, and fancied that, if
moonlight could be heard, it would sound just like that. Finally, he
took a draught at the Shaker spring, and, as if it were the true
Castalia, was forthwith moved to compose a lyric, a Farewell to his
Harp, which he swore should be its closing strain, the last verse that
an ungrateful world should have from him. This effusion, with two or
three other little pieces, subsequently written, he took the first
opportunity to send, by one of the Shaker brethren, to Concord, where
they were published in the New Hampshire Patriot.

Meantime, another of the Canterbury pilgrims, one so different from the
poet that the delicate fancy of the latter could hardly have conceived
of him, began to relate his sad experience. He was a small man, of
quick and unquiet gestures, about fifty years old, with a narrow
forehead, all wrinkled and drawn together. He held in his hand a
pencil, and a card of some commission-merchant in foreign parts, on the
back of which, for there was light enough to read or write by, he
seemed ready to figure out a calculation.

"Young man," said he, abruptly, "what quantity of land do the Shakers
own here, in Canterbury?"

"That is more than I can tell thee, friend," answered Josiah, "but it
is a very rich establishment, and for a long way by the roadside thee
may guess the land to be ours, by the neatness of the fences."

"And what may be the value of the whole," continued the stranger, "with
all the buildings and improvements, pretty nearly, in round numbers?"

"Oh, a monstrous sum,--more than I can reckon," replied the young
Shaker.

"Well, sir," said the pilgrim, "there was a day, and not very long ago,
neither, when I stood at my counting-room window, and