elcome to go through the garden as often as he pleased. She accompanied
her words with a smile that made Robert feel not only that she was
the most beautiful of all princesses in fairy-tales, but that she had
presented him with something beyond price in the most self-denying
manner. He took off his cap, thanked her with much heartiness, if not
with much polish, and hastened to the gate of his grandmother's little
garden. A few years later such an encounter might have spoiled his
dinner: I have to record no such evil result of the adventure.

With Miss St. John, music was the highest form of human expression, as
must often be the case with those whose feeling is much in advance of
their thought, and to whom, therefore, may be called mental sensation
is the highest known condition. Music to such is poetry in solution, and
generates that infinite atmosphere, common to both musician and poet,
which the latter fills with shining worlds.--But if my reader wishes to
follow out for himself the idea herein suggested, he must be careful to
make no confusion between those who feel musically or think poetically,
and the musician or the poet. One who can only play the music of others,
however exquisitely, is not a musician, any more than one who can read
verse to the satisfaction, or even expound it to the enlightenment of
the poet himself, is therefore a poet.--When Miss St. John would worship
God, it was in music that she found the chariot of fire in which to
ascend heavenward. Hence music was the divine thing in the world for
her; and to find any one loving music humbly and faithfully was to find
a brother or sister believer. But she had been so often disappointed in
her expectations from those she took to be such, that of late she had
become less sanguine. Still there was something about this boy that
roused once more her musical hopes; and, however she may have restrained
herself from the full indulgence of them, certain it is that the next
day, when she saw Robert pass, this time leisurely, along the top of the
garden, she put on her bonnet and shawl, and, allowing him time to reach
his den, followed him, in the hope of finding out whether or not he
could play. I do not know what proficiency the boy had attained, very
likely not much, for a man can feel the music of his own bow, or of his
own lines, long before any one else can discover it. He had already made
a path, not exactly worn one, but trampled one, through the neglected