ws that had personated dead or
distant people and stripping his cavern of the unreal splendor which
had changed it to a palace.

And now for a moral to my reverie. Shall it be that, since fancy can
create so bright a dream of happiness, it were better to dream on from
youth to age than to awake and strive doubtfully for something real?
Oh, the slight tissue of a dream can no more preserve us from the
stern reality of misfortune than a robe of cobweb could repel the
wintry blast. Be this the moral, then: In chaste and warm affections,
humble wishes and honest toil for some useful end there is health for
the mind and quiet for the heart, the prospect of a happy life and the
fairest hope of heaven.

THE AMBITIOUS GUEST.

One September night a family had gathered round their hearth and piled
it high with the driftwood of mountain-streams, the dry cones of the
pine, and the splintered ruins of great trees that had come crashing
down the precipice. Up the chimney roared the fire, and brightened the
room with its broad blaze. The faces of the father and mother had a
sober gladness; the children laughed. The eldest daughter was the
image of Happiness at seventeen, and the aged grandmother, who sat
knitting in the warmest place, was the image of Happiness grown old.
They had found the "herb heart's-ease" in the bleakest spot of all New
England. This family were situated in the Notch of the White Hills,
where the wind was sharp throughout the year and pitilessly cold in
the winter, giving their cottage all its fresh inclemency before it
descended on the valley of the Saco. They dwelt in a cold spot and a
dangerous one, for a mountain towered above their heads so steep that
the stones would often rumble down its sides and startle them at
midnight.

The daughter had just uttered some simple jest that filled them all
with mirth, when the wind came through the Notch and seemed to pause
before their cottage, rattling the door with a sound of wailing and
lamentation before it passed into the valley. For a moment it saddened
them, though there was nothing unusual in the tones. But the family
were glad again when they perceived that the latch was lifted by some
traveller whose footsteps had been unheard amid the dreary blast which
heralded his approach and wailed as he was entering and went moaning
away from the door.

Though they dwelt in such a solitude, these people held daily converse
with the world. The romantic pass