t needed. You don't suppose they find much joy in the fellowship of
brown pine pins and sad, gray mosses, do you? Some folks say they don't
grow away from the shore; but I've found them, I'm sorry to say, up in
New Hampshire."

"Why sorry?" asked Lu.

"Oh, I like it best that they need our sea. They're eminently choice for
this hour, too, when you scarcely gather their tint,--that tint, as if
moonlight should wish to become a flower,--but their fragrance is an
atmosphere all about you. How genuinely spicy it is! It's the very
quintessence of those regions all whose sweetness exudes in
sun-saturated balsams,--the very breath of pine woods and salt sea
winds. How could it live away from the sea?"

"Why, Sir," said Mr. Dudley, "you speak as if it were a creature!"

"A hard, woody stem, a green, robust leaf, a delicate, odorous flower,
Mr. Dudley, what is it all but an expression of New England character?"

"Doxology!" said I.

"Now, Miss Louise, as you have made me atone for my freedom, the task
being done, let me present them in form."

"I'm sure she needn't praise them," said I.

She didn't.

"I declared people make a great fuss over them," I continued. "And you
prove it. You put me in mind of a sound, to be heard where one gets
them,--a strange sound, like low, distant thunder, and it's nothing but
the drum of a little partridge! a great song out of nothing.--Bless me!
what's that?"

"Oh, the fireworks!" said Lu. And we all thronged to the windows.

"It's very good of your uncle to have them," said Rose. "What a crowd
from the town! Think of the pyrotechnics among comets and aerolites some
fellows may have! It's quite right, too, to make our festivals with
light; it's the highest and last of all things; we never can carry our
imaginations beyond light"----

"Our imaginations ought to carry us," said Lu.

"Come," I said, "you can play what pranks you please with the little
May; but light is my province, my absorption; let it alone."

It grew quite dark, interrupted now and then by the glare of rockets;
but at last a stream of central fire went out in a slow rain of
countless violets, reflected with pale blue flashes in the river below,
and then the gloom was unbroken. I saw them, in that long, dim gleam,
standing together at a window. Louise, her figure almost swaying as if
to some inaudible music, but her face turned to him with such a steady
quiet. Ah, me! what a tremulous joy, what passion, and what s