ow, that they
are of cheap human manufacture.

--Do you think cheap manufactures encourage idleness?--said I.

The Master stared. Well he might, for I had been getting a little
drowsy, and wishing to show that I had been awake and attentive, asked a
question suggested by some words I had caught, but which showed that I
had not been taking the slightest idea from what he was reading me. He
stared, shook his head slowly, smiled good-humoredly, took off his great
round spectacles, and shut up his book.

--Sat prates biberunt,--he said. A sick man that gets talking about
himself, a woman that gets talking about her baby, and an author that
begins reading out of his own book, never know when to stop. You'll
think of some of these things you've been getting half asleep over by and
by. I don't want you to believe anything I say; I only want you to try
to see what makes me believe it.

My young friend, the Astronomer, has, I suspect, been making some
addition to his manuscript. At any rate some of the lines he read us in
the afternoon of this same day had never enjoyed the benefit of my
revision, and I think they had but just been written. I noticed that his
manner was somewhat more excited than usual, and his voice just towards
the close a little tremulous. Perhaps I may attribute his improvement to
the effect of my criticisms, but whatever the reason, I think these lines
are very nearly as correct as they would have been if I had looked them
over.

WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS.

VII

What if a soul redeemed, a spirit that loved
While yet on earth and was beloved in turn,
And still remembered every look and tone
Of that dear earthly sister who was left
Among the unwise virgins at the gate,
Itself admitted with the bridegroom's train,
What if this spirit redeemed, amid the host
Of chanting angels, in some transient lull
Of the eternal anthem, heard the cry
Of its lost darling, whom in evil hour
Some wilder pulse of nature led astray
And left an outcast in a world of fire,
Condemned to be the sport of cruel fiends,
Sleepless, unpitying, masters of the skill
To wring the maddest ecstasies of pain
From worn-out souls that only ask to die,
Would it not long to leave the bliss of Heaven,
Bearing a