the
promise held out by such an exquisite prospect as that before them.

The friends were standing where the Catskill hills lay before them
in echelon towards the river, the ridges lapping over each other and
receding in the distance, a gradation of lines most artistically drawn,
still further refined by shades of violet, which always have the effect
upon the contemplative mind of either religious exaltation or the
kindling of a sentiment which is in the young akin to the emotion of
love. While the artist was making some memoranda of these outlines, and
Mr. King was drawing I know not what auguries of hope from these purple
heights, a young lady seated upon a rock near by--a young lady just
stepping over the border-line of womanhood--had her eyes also fixed upon
those dreamy distances, with that look we all know so well, betraying
that shy expectancy of life which is unconfessed, that tendency to
maidenly reverie which it were cruel to interpret literally. At the
moment she is more interesting than the Catskills--the brown hair, the
large eyes unconscious of anything but the most natural emotion, the
shapely waist just beginning to respond to the call of the future--it
is a pity that we shall never see her again, and that she has nothing
whatever to do with our journey. She also will have her romance;
fate will meet her in the way some day, and set her pure heart wildly
beating, and she will know what those purple distances mean. Happiness,
tragedy, anguish--who can tell what is in store for her? I cannot but
feel profound sadness at meeting her in this casual way and never seeing
her again. Who says that the world is not full of romance and pathos and
regret as we go our daily way in it? You meet her at a railway station;
there is the flutter of a veil, the gleam of a scarlet bird, the lifting
of a pair of eyes--she is gone; she is entering a drawing-room, and
stops a moment and turns away; she is looking from a window as you
pass--it is only a glance out of eternity; she stands for a second upon
a rock looking seaward; she passes you at the church door--is that all?
It is discovered that instantaneous photographs can be taken. They are
taken all the time; some of them are never developed, but I suppose
these impressions are all there on the sensitive plate, and that the
plate is permanently affected by the impressions. The pity of it is that
the world is so full of these undeveloped knowledges of people worth
knowing