m within your breast.

As your head falls back upon the pillow you think--in a whisper be it
spoken--how pleasant in these night solitudes would be the rise and
fall of a softer breathing than your own, the slight pressure of a
tenderer bosom, the quiet throb of a purer heart, imparting its
peacefulness to your troubled one, as if the fond sleeper were
involving you in her dream. Her influence is over you, though she have
no existence but in that momentary image. You sink down in a flowery
spot on the borders of sleep and wakefulness, while your thoughts rise
before you in pictures, all disconnected, yet all assimilated by a
pervading gladsomeness and beauty. The wheeling of gorgeous squadrons
that glitter in the sun is succeeded by the merriment of children
round the door of a schoolhouse beneath the glimmering shadow of old
trees at the corner of a rustic lane. You stand in the sunny rain of a
summer shower, and wander among the sunny trees of an autumnal wood,
and look upward at the brightest of all rainbows overarching the
unbroken sheet of snow on the American side of Niagara. Your mind
struggles pleasantly between the dancing radiance round the hearth of
a young man and his recent bride and the twittering flight of birds in
spring about their new-made nest. You feel the merry bounding of a
ship before the breeze, and watch the tuneful feet of rosy girls as
they twine their last and merriest dance in a splendid ball-room, and
find yourself in the brilliant circle of a crowded theatre as the
curtain falls over a light and airy scene.

With an involuntary start you seize hold on consciousness, and prove
yourself but half awake by running a doubtful parallel between human
life and the hour which has now elapsed. In both you emerge from
mystery, pass through a vicissitude that you can but imperfectly
control, and are borne onward to another mystery. Now comes the peal
of the distant clock with fainter and fainter strokes as you plunge
farther into the wilderness of sleep. It is the knell of a temporary
death. Your spirit has departed, and strays like a free citizen among
the people of a shadowy world, beholding strange sights, yet without
wonder or dismay. So calm, perhaps, will be the final change--so
undisturbed, as if among familiar things, the entrance of the soul to
its eternal home.

THE VILLAGE UNCLE.

AN IMAGINARY RETROSPECT.

Come! another log upon the hearth. True, our little parlor is
comforta