they might sail
away to distant lands. But I have remained here--must always remain
here, sitting at my desk in the office, and patiently see other people
fetch their passports to go abroad. Such is my fate! Alas!"--sighed he,
and was again silent. "Great Heaven! What is come to me! Never have I
thought or felt like this before! It must be the summer air that affects
me with feelings almost as disquieting as they are refreshing."

He felt in his pocket for the papers. "These police-reports will soon
stem the torrent of my ideas, and effectually hinder any rebellious
overflowing of the time-worn banks of official duties"; he said to
himself consolingly, while his eye ran over the first page. "DAME
TIGBRITH, tragedy in five acts." "What is that? And yet it is undeniably
my own handwriting. Have I written the tragedy? Wonderful, very
wonderful!--And this--what have I here? 'INTRIGUE ON THE RAMPARTS; or
THE DAY OF REPENTANCE: vaudeville with new songs to the most favorite
airs.' The deuce! Where did I get all this rubbish? Some one must have
slipped it slyly into my pocket for a joke. There is too a letter to me;
a crumpled letter and the seal broken."

Yes; it was not a very polite epistle from the manager of a theatre, in
which both pieces were flatly refused.

"Hem! hem!" said the clerk breathlessly, and quite exhausted he seated
himself on a bank. His thoughts were so elastic, his heart so tender;
and involuntarily he picked one of the nearest flowers. It is a simple
daisy, just bursting out of the bud. What the botanist tells us after
a number of imperfect lectures, the flower proclaimed in a minute. It
related the mythus of its birth, told of the power of the sun-light that
spread out its delicate leaves, and forced them to impregnate the air
with their incense--and then he thought of the manifold struggles of
life, which in like manner awaken the budding flowers of feeling in our
bosom. Light and air contend with chivalric emulation for the love of
the fair flower that bestowed her chief favors on the latter; full of
longing she turned towards the light, and as soon as it vanished, rolled
her tender leaves together and slept in the embraces of the air. "It is
the light which adorns me," said the flower.

"But 'tis the air which enables thee to breathe," said the poet's voice.

Close by stood a boy who dashed his stick into a wet ditch. The drops of
water splashed up to the green leafy roof, and the clerk thought