masses of crystalline
matter.

But the plants that come up every year in the same place, like the
Star-of-Bethlehems, of all the lesser objects, give me the liveliest
home-feeling. Close to our ancient gambrel-roofed house is the dwelling
of pleasant old Neighbor Walrus. I remember the sweet honeysuckle that I
saw in flower against the wall of his house a few months ago, as long as
I remember the sky and stars. That clump of peonies, butting their
purple heads through the soil every spring in just the same circle, and
by-and-by unpacking their hard balls of buds in flowers big enough to
make a double handful of leaves, has come up in just that place, Neighbor
Walrus tells me, for more years than I have passed on this planet. It is
a rare privilege in our nomadic state to find the home of one's childhood
and its immediate neighborhood thus unchanged. Many born poets, I am
afraid, flower poorly in song, or not at all, because they have been too
often transplanted.

Then a good many of our race are very hard and unimaginative;--their
voices have nothing caressing; their movements are as of machinery
without elasticity or oil. I wish it were fair to print a letter a young
girl, about the age of our Iris, wrote a short time since. "I am *** ***
***," she says, and tells her whole name outright. Ah!--said I, when I
read that first frank declaration,--you are one of the right sort!--She
was. A winged creature among close-clipped barn door fowl. How tired
the poor girl was of the dull life about her,--the old woman's "skeleton
hand" at the window opposite, drawing her curtains,--"Ma'am shooing away
the hens,"--the vacuous country eyes staring at her as only country eyes
can stare,--a routine of mechanical duties, and the soul's
half-articulated cry for sympathy, without an answer! Yes,--pray for
her, and for all such! Faith often cures their longings; but it is so
hard to give a soul to heaven that has not first been trained in the
fullest and sweetest human affections! Too often they fling their hearts
away on unworthy objects. Too often they pine in a secret discontent,
which spreads its leaden cloud over the morning of their youth. The
immeasurable distance between one of these delicate natures and the
average youths among whom is like to be her only choice makes one's heart
ache. How many women are born too finely organized in sense and soul for
the highway they must walk with feet unshod! Life is adjuste