tell of the
earlier period, believe; and to what I may relate of the later time,
give only such credit as may seem due, or doubt it altogether, or, if
doubt it ye cannot, then play unto its riddle the Oedipus.

She whom I loved in youth, and of whom I now pen calmly and distinctly
these remembrances, was the sole daughter of the only sister of my
mother long departed. Eleonora was the name of my cousin. We had
always dwelled together, beneath a tropical sun, in the Valley of the
Many-Colored Grass. No unguided footstep ever came upon that vale; for
it lay away up among a range of giant hills that hung beetling around
about it, shutting out the sunlight from its sweetest recesses. No path
was trodden in its vicinity; and, to reach our happy home, there was
need of putting back, with force, the foliage of many thousands of
forest trees, and of crushing to death the glories of many millions of
fragrant flowers. Thus it was that we lived all alone, knowing nothing
of the world without the valley--I, and my cousin, and her mother.

From the dim regions beyond the mountains at the upper end of our
encircled domain, there crept out a narrow and deep river, brighter than
all save the eyes of Eleonora; and, winding stealthily about in mazy
courses, it passed away, at length, through a shadowy gorge, among hills
still dimmer than those whence it had issued. We called it the "River
of Silence"; for there seemed to be a hushing influence in its flow.
No murmur arose from its bed, and so gently it wandered along, that the
pearly pebbles upon which we loved to gaze, far down within its bosom,
stirred not at all, but lay in a motionless content, each in its own old
station, shining on gloriously forever.

The margin of the river, and of the many dazzling rivulets that glided
through devious ways into its channel, as well as the spaces that
extended from the margins away down into the depths of the streams until
they reached the bed of pebbles at the bottom,--these spots, not less
than the whole surface of the valley, from the river to the mountains
that girdled it in, were carpeted all by a soft green grass, thick,
short, perfectly even, and vanilla-perfumed, but so besprinkled
throughout with the yellow buttercup, the white daisy, the purple
violet, and the ruby-red asphodel, that its exceeding beauty spoke to
our hearts in loud tones, of the love and of the glory of God.

And, here and there, in groves about this grass, like wil