ghts); "and meanwhile the steady pulse of life beats on, not
pausing while we battle out our days, not waiting while we decide how we
shall live. We are possessed by a sentiment, an ideal, a religion; old
Time makes no comment, but moves quietly on; we fling the thing aside as
tawdry, insufficient; the ideal is tarnished, experience of the world
converts us--and still unmoved, he paces on. We are off on another
chase; another conception of things possesses us; and still the beat of
his footstep sounds in our ears, above the tumult. We think and aspire
and dream, and meanwhile the fires grow cold upon the hearth, the daily
cares and common needs plead eloquently for our undivided service; the
stupendous movement of Existence goes on unceasingly, at our doors;
thousands struggling for gold and fame and mere bread, and resorting to
infamous devices to obtain them; the great commercial currents flow and
flow, according to their mystic laws; the price of stocks goes up, goes
down, and with them, the life and fate of thousands; the inconsequent
bells ring out from Craddock Church, and the people congregate; the
grave of the schoolmistress sleeps in the sunshine, and the sound of the
bells streams over it--meaning no irony--to lose itself in the quiet of
the hills; rust and dust collect in one's house, in one's soul; and this
and that, and that and this,--like the pendulum of the old time-piece,
with its solemn tick--dock the moments of one's life, with each its dull
little claim and its tough little tether, and lead one decorously to the
gateway of Eternity."

There was a flutter of wings, in the room. A robin hopped in at the
window and perched daintily on the table-ledge, its delicate claws
outlined against the whiteness of the dust-sheet, its head inquisitively
on one side, as if it were asking the reason of the musician's unusual
silence. Suddenly, the little creature fluffed out its feathers, drew
itself together, and warbled forth a rich ecstatic song, that seemed to
be deliberately addressed to its human companion. Hadria raised her
bowed head. Up welled the swift unaccustomed tears, while the robin,
with increasing enthusiasm, continued his song. His theme, doubtless,
was of the flicker of sunlit shrubberies, the warmth of summer, the
glory of spring, the sweetness of the revolving seasons. For cure of
heart-ache, he suggested the pleasantness of garden nooks, and the
repose that lingers about a dew-sprinkled lawn. All