hat shut in the
amber-flowing Housatonic--dark stream, but clear, like the lucid orbs
that shine beneath the lids of auburn-haired, sherry-wine-eyed
demiblondes--in the home overlooking the winding stream and the
smooth, flat meadow; looked down upon by wild hills, where the tracks
of bears and catamounts may yet sometimes be seen upon the winter
snow; facing the twin summits which rise in the far North, the highest
waves of the great land storm in this billowy region--suggestive to
mad fancies of the breasts of a half-buried Titaness, stretched out by
a stray thunderbolt, and hastily hidden away beneath the leaves of
the forest--in that home where seven blest summers were passed, which
stand in memory like the seven golden candlesticks in the beatific
vision of the holy dreamer--

"--in that modest dwelling we were just looking at, not glorious, yet
not unlovely in the youth of its drab and mahogany--full of great and
little boys' playthings from top to bottom--in all these summer or
winter nests he was always at home and always welcome.

"This long articulated sigh of reminiscences--this calenture which
shows me the maple-shadowed plains of Berkshire and the
mountain-circled green of Grafton beneath the salt waves that come
feeling their way along the wall at my feet, restless and
soft-touching as blind men's busy fingers--is for that friend of mine
who looks into the waters of the Patapsco and sees beneath them the
same visions that paint themselves for me in the green depths of the
Charles."

Did I talk all this off to the schoolmistress? Why, no--of course not.
I have been talking with you, the reader, for the last ten minutes.
You don't think I should expect any woman to listen to such a sentence
as that long one, without giving her a chance to put in a word?

What did I say to the schoolmistress? Permit me one moment. I don't
doubt your delicacy and good-breeding; but in this particular case, as
I was allowed the privilege of walking alone with a very interesting
young woman, you must allow me to remark, in the classic version of a
familiar phrase, used by our Master Benjamin Franklin, it is _nullum
tui negotii_.

When the schoolmistress and I reached the schoolroom door, the damask
roses I spoke of were so much heightened in color by exercise that I
felt sure it would be useful to her to take a stroll like this every
morning, and made up my mind I would ask her to let me join her again.

IV

OF W