betray signs in the bud and blossom, only in
a softer clearness in the air, a more lingering pause in the slowly
lengthening day; a more delicate freshness and balm in the twilight
atmosphere; a more lively, yet still unquiet, note from the birds,
settling down into their Coverts; the vague sense under all that hush,
which still outwardly wears the bleak sterility of winter, of the busy
change, hourly, modestly, at work, renewing the youth of the world,
re-clothing with vigorous bloom the skeletons of things,--all these
messages from the heart of Nature to the heart of Man may well affect
and move us. But why with melancholy? No thought on our part connects
and construes the low, gentle voices. It is not thought that replies and
reasons, it is feeling that hears and dreams. Examine not, O child of
man!--examine not that mysterious melancholy with the hard eyes of thy
reason; thou canst not impale it on the spikes of thy thorny logic,
nor describe its enchanted circle by problems conned from thy schools.
Borderer thyself of two worlds,--the Dead and the Living,--give thine
ear to the tones, bow thy soul to the shadows, that steal, in the Season
of Change, from the dim Border Land.

Blanche (in a whisper).--"What are you thinking of? Speak, pray!"

Pisistratus.--"I was not thinking, Blanche,--or, if I were, the thought
is gone at the mere effort to seize or detain it."

Blanche (after a pause).--"I know what you mean. It is the same with me
often,--so often when I am sitting by my self, quite still. It is just
like the story Primmins was telling us the other evening, 'how there was
a woman in her village who saw things and people in a piece of crystal
not bigger than my hand;(1) they passed along as large as life, but they
were only pictures in the crystal.' Since I heard the story, when aunt
asks me what I am thinking of, I long to say, 'I'm not thinking, I'm
seeing pictures in the crystal!'"

Pisistratus.--"Tell my father that,--it will please him; there is more
philosophy in it than you are aware of, Blanche. There are wise men who
have thought the whole world, its 'pride, pomp, and circumstance,' only
a phantom image,--a picture in the crystal."

Blanche.--"And I shall see you,--see us both, as we are sitting here;
and that star which has just risen yonder,--see it all in my crystal,
when you are gone!--gone, cousin!" (And Blanche's head drooped.)

There was something so quiet and deep in the tenderness of this