the
cross-path of life, that I may choose otherwise than I did.' But his
father and his youth had long since passed away.

"He saw fiery exhalations dancing on the marshes, and extinguishing
themselves in the church-yard, and he said, 'These are the days of my
folly!' He saw a star fly from heaven, and, in falling, glimmer and
dissolve upon the earth. 'That am I!' said his bleeding heart, and the
serpent-teeth of remorse dug therein further in its wounds.

"His flaming fancy showed him sleepwalkers, slinking away on the
house-tops; and a windmill raised up its arms threateningly to destroy
him; and a mask that remained behind in the empty charnel-house assumed by
degrees his own features.

"In the midst of this paroxysm, suddenly the music for the new year flowed
down from the steeple, like distant church anthems. He became more gently
moved. He looked round on the horizon and upon the wide world, and thought
on the friends of his youth, who, better and more happy than he, were now
instructors of the earth, fathers of happy children, and blest men, and he
exclaimed, 'Oh! I also might have slumbered like you, this new year's
night with dry eyes, had I chosen it. Ah, I might have been happy, beloved
parents! had I fulfilled your new year's wishes and instructions.'

In feverish recollection of the period of his youth, it appeared to him as
if the mask with his features raised itself up in the charnel-house--at
length, through the superstition which, on the new year's night, beholds
spirits and futurity, it grew to a living youth in the position of the
beautiful boy of the capitol, pulling out a thorn; and his former blooming
figure was bitterly placed as a phantasma before him.

"He could behold it no longer, he covered his eyes. A thousand hot,
draining tears streamed into the snow. He now only softly sighed,
inconsolably and unconsciously, 'Only come again, youth! come again!'

"And it came again, for he had only dreamed so fearfully on the new year's
night. He was still a youth. His errors alone had been no dream; but he
thanked God that, still young, he could turn round in the foul ways of
vice, and fall back on the sun-path which conducts into the pure land of
harvests.

"Turn with him, youthful reader, if thou standest on his path of error!
This frightful dream will, in future, become thy judge; but shouldst thou
one day call out, full of anguish, 'Come again, beautiful youth!' it would
not come again."