itude--that this should happen with minds morbidly meditative;
that, when we stretch out our arms in darkness, vainly striving to draw
back the sweet faces that have vanished, slowly arises a new stratagem of
grief, and we say--"Be it that they no more come back to us, yet what
hinders but we should go to _them_?"

Perilous is that crisis for the young. In its effect perfectly the same as
the ignoble witchcraft of the poor African _Obeah_,[13] this sublimer
witchcraft of grief will, if left to follow its own natural course,
terminate in the same catastrophe of death. Poetry, which neglects no
phenomena that are interesting to the heart of man, has sometimes touched
a little

"On the sublime attractions of the grave."

But you think that these attractions, existing at times for the adult,
could not exist for the child. Understand that you are wrong. Understand
that these attractions _do_ exist for the child; and perhaps as much more
strongly than they _can_ exist for the adult, by the whole difference
between the concentration of a childish love, and the inevitable
distraction upon multiplied objects of any love that can affect an adult.
There is a German superstition (well-known by a popular translation) of
the Erl-king's Daughter, who fixes her love upon some child, and seeks to
wile him away into her own shadowy kingdom in forests.

"Who is it that rides through the forest so fast?"

It is a knight, who carries his child before him on the saddle. The
Erl-king's Daughter rides on his right hand, and still whispers
temptations to the infant audible only to _him_.

"If thou wilt, dear baby, with me go away,
We will see a fine show, we will play a fine play."

The consent of the baby is essential to her success. And finally she
_does_ succeed. Other charms, other temptations, would have been requisite
for me. My intellect was too advanced for those fascinations. But could
the Erl-king's Daughter have revealed herself to me, and promised to lead
me where my sister was, she might have wiled me by the hand into the
dimmest forests upon earth. Languishing was my condition at that time.
Still I languished for things "which" (a voice from heaven seemed to
answer through my own heart) "_can_not be granted;" and which, when again
I languished, again the voice repeated, "_cannot_ be granted."

* * * * *

Well it was for me that, at this crisis, I was summoned to put on the
harness o