's wings fanned the air,
And murmured, "I am life."

Love came at eve, and when the day was done,
When heart and brain were tired, and slumber pressed;
Love came at eve, shut out the sinking sun,
And whispered, "I am rest."

The summer seasons of Susy's childhood were spent at Quarry Farm, on the
hills east of Elmira, New York; the other seasons of the year at the
home in Hartford. Like other children, she was blithe and happy, fond of
play; unlike the average of children, she was at times much given to
retiring within herself, and trying to search out the hidden meanings of
the deep things that make the puzzle and pathos of human existence, and
in all the ages have baffled the inquirer and mocked him. As a little
child aged seven, she was oppressed and perplexed by the maddening
repetition of the stock incidents of our race's fleeting sojourn here,
just as the same thing has oppressed and perplexed maturer minds from
the beginning of time. A myriad of men are born; they labor and sweat
and struggle for bread; they squabble and scold and fight; they scramble
for little mean advantages over each other; age creeps upon them;
infirmities follow; shames and humiliations bring down their prides and
their vanities; those they love are taken from them, and the joy of life
is turned to aching grief. The burden of pain, care, misery, grows
heavier year by year; at length, ambition is dead, pride is dead; vanity
is dead; longing for release is in their place. It comes at last--the
only unpoisoned gift earth ever had for them--and they vanish from a
world where they were of no consequence; where they achieved nothing;
where they were a mistake and a failure and a foolishness; there they
have left no sign that they have existed--a world which will lament them
a day and forget them forever. Then another myriad takes their place,
and copies all they did, and goes along the same profitless road, and
vanishes as they vanished--to make room for another, and another, and a
million other myriads, to follow the same arid path through the same
desert, and accomplish what the first myriad, and all the myriads that
came after it, accomplished--nothing!

"Mamma, what is it all for?" asked Susy, preliminarily stating the
above details in her own halting language, after long brooding over them
alone in the privacy of the nursery.

A year later, she was groping her way alone through another sunless bog,
but t