ay upon a bank of sweet-smelling grasses, and
about me were the great oaks. The organ, or the waves, spoke on.
I looked up, up, into the great circle of the sky, so far, so
blue, so kind in its bending over, so pitying it seemed to me,
yet so high in its up-reaching. I looked upon the glorious
pageant of the stars.

"That star," thought I, "shone over the grave of some ancestor
of mine; back, back in the unmirrored past, some father of some
father of mine. He is gone, like a fly. He is dust. I may be
lying on his grave. Soon, like a fly, I, too, shall be dead,
gone, turned into dust. But the star will still shine on. Small
as that father's dust may be, that dust still lives. It is about
me. This grass, these trees, may hold it. He has lived again in
the cycle of natural forces. My dust, when I am dead, will in
turn make part of this world, one of an unknown sea of stars.
Small then, as I am, I am kin to that star. The stars go on.
Nature goes on. Then shall man--shall I--"

"Ah," said the Singing Mouse, its voice sounding I knew not
whence; "from this place can you see?"

So now I thought I began to see what I had not seen before. And
since this was in the land of the Singing Mouse, I sought to
find no name for what I saw, nor tried to measure it. What one
man sees is not what another sees. Shall one claim wisdom beyond
his neighbor? Are not the stars his also, and the trees his, to
talk with him? Are not the doors always open? Does not the music
of the organ ever roll, do not the voices always rise?

Had it not been for the Singing Mouse I should not have thought
these things.

[Illustration]

[Illustration: Where the City Went]

[Illustration]

WHERE THE CITY WENT

One day there was a white frost that fell upon the city, lasting
for many hours, so that a strange thing happened, at which men
wondered very much. The city put aside its colors of black and
brown and gray, and dressed itself in silvery white. No stone
nor brick was seen except in this silvern frosty color. All the
spires were glittering in silver, and all the columns bore
traceries as though the hands of spirits had labored long and
delicately and had seen their tender fretwork frozen softly but
for ever into silver. The gross city had put aside corporeal
things, and for once its spirit shone fair and radiant; so that
men said no such thing had ever been before.

That evening the frost still remained, and as the night came on
a m