m the bow of the steamer, one after another, growing ever wider,
wrinkling and broadening, becoming smoother at last, swaying and
vanishing. The churned foam swirled under the monotonous beat of the
paddle-wheels; gleaming white like milk, and hissing faintly, it was
broken up into serpent-like ripples, and then flowed together at a
distance, and vanished likewise, swallowed up in the gloom.

A small bell at the stern jingled as incessantly and plaintively as the
squeaking cry of the monkey.

Now and then a seal came to the surface, and turning an abrupt
somersault, darted off beneath the barely-disturbed surface.

And the captain, a taciturn man with a surly, sunburned face, smoked a
short pipe and spat angrily into the sea, congealed in impassivity.

To all my questions he replied with an abrupt growl. I was compelled,
willy-nilly, to have recourse to my solitary fellow-traveller--the
monkey.

I sat down beside her; she ceased to whine, and again stretched out her
hand to me.

The motionless fog enveloped us both with a soporific humidity; and
equally immersed in one unconscious thought, we remained there side by
side, like blood-relatives.

I smile now ... but then another feeling reigned in me.

We are all children of one mother--and it pleased me that the poor
little beastie should quiet down so confidingly and nestle up to me, as
though to a relative.

November, 1879.

N. N.

Gracefully and quietly dost thou walk along the path of life, without
tears and without smiles, barely animated by an indifferent attention.

Thou art kind and clever ... and everything is alien to thee--and no one
is necessary to thee.

Thou art very beautiful--and no one can tell whether thou prizest thy
beauty or not.--Thou art devoid of sympathy thyself and demandest no
sympathy.

Thy gaze is profound, and not thoughtful; emptiness lies in that bright
depth.

Thus do the stately shades pass by without grief and without joy in the
Elysian Fields, to the dignified sounds of Gluck's melodies.

November, 1879.

STAY!

Stay! As I now behold thee remain thou evermore in my memory!

From thy lips the last inspired sound hath burst forth--thine eyes do
not gleam and flash, they are dusky, weighted with happiness, with the
blissful consciousness of that beauty to which thou hast succeeded in
giving expression,--of that beauty in quest of which thou stretchest
forth, as it were, thy triumphant, thine exhaus