--How charming! It must be so much pleasanter than to be alone in such a
great empty space! I should think one would hardly care to shine if its
light wasted itself in the monstrous solitude of the sky. Does not a
single star seem very lonely to you up there?

--Not more lonely than I am myself,--answered the Young Astronomer.

--I don't know what there was in those few words, but I noticed that
for a minute or two after they, were uttered I heard the ticking of the
clock-work that moved the telescope as clearly as if we had all been
holding our breath, and listening for the music of the spheres.

The Young Girl kept her eye closely applied to the eye-piece of
the telescope a very long time, it seemed to me. Those double stars
interested her a good deal, no doubt. When she looked off from the glass
I thought both her eyes appeared very much as if they had been a little
strained, for they were suffused and glistening. It may be that she
pitied the lonely young man.

I know nothing in the world tenderer than the pity that a kind-hearted
young girl has for a young man who feels lonely. It is true that these
dear creatures are all compassion for every form of human woe,
and anxious to alleviate all human misfortunes. They will go to
Sunday-schools through storms their brothers are afraid of, to teach the
most unpleasant and intractable classes of little children the age of
Methuselah and the dimensions of Og the King of Bashan's bedstead. They
will stand behind a table at a fair all day until they are ready to
drop, dressed in their prettiest clothes and their sweetest smiles, and
lay hands upon you, like--so many Lady Potiphars,--perfectly correct
ones, of course,--to make you buy what you do not want, at prices which
you cannot afford; all this as cheerfully as if it were not martyrdom
to them as well as to you. Such is their love for all good objects, such
their eagerness to sympathize with all their suffering fellow-creatures!
But there is nothing they pity as they pity a lonely young man.

I am sure, I sympathize with her in this instance. To see a pale student
burning away, like his own midnight lamp, with only dead men's hands to
hold, stretched out to him from the sepulchres of books, and dead men's
souls imploring him from their tablets to warm them over again just for
a little while in a human consciousness, when all this time there are
soft, warm, living hands that would ask nothing better than to bring th