e party within it sang Swedish
and Danish songs; but by the shore, under that tall, hanging birch,
sat four young girls--so pretty--so sylph-like! and they each plucked
up from the grass four long straws, and bound these straws two and two
together, at the top and the bottom.

"We shall now see if they will come together in a square," said the
girls: "if it be so, then that which I think of will be fulfilled,"
and they bound them, and they thought.

No one got to know the secret thought, the heart's silent wish of the
others. But yet a little bird sings about it.

The thoughts of one flew over sea and land, over the high mountains,
where the mule finds its way in the mists, down to Mignon's beautiful
land, where the old gods live in marble and painting. "Thither,
thither! shall I ever get there?" That was the wish, that was the
thought, and she opened her hand, looked at the bound straws, and they
appeared only two and two bound together.

And where were the second one's thoughts? also in foreign lands, in
the gunpowder's smoke, amongst the glitter of arms and cannons, with
him, the friend of her childhood, fighting for imperial power, against
the Hungarian people. Will he return joyful and unharmed--return to
Sweden's peaceful, well-constituted, happy land? The straws showed no
square: a tear dwelt in the girl's eye.

The third smiled: there was a sort of mischief in the smile. Will our
aged bachelor and that old maiden-lady yonder, who now wander along so
young, smile so young, and speak so youthfully to each other, not be a
married couple before the cuckoo sings again next year? See--that is
what I should like to know! and the smile played around the thinker's
mouth, but she did not speak her thoughts. The straws were
separated--consequently the bachelor and the old maid also. "It may,
however, happen nevertheless," she certainly thought: it was apparent
in the smile; it was obvious in the manner in which she threw the
straws away.

"There is nothing I would know--nothing that I am curious to know!"
said the fourth; but yet she bound the straws together; for within her
also there was a wish alive; but no bird has sung about it; no one
guesses it.

Rock thyself securely in the heart's lotus flower, thou shining
humming-bird, thy' name shall not be pronounced: and besides the
straws said as before--"without hope!"

"Now you! now you!" cried the young girls to a stranger, far from the
neighbouring land, from