ll you of the world
which we have left, and into which you are going, perhaps you will turn
back with us of your own accord. What say you?" added he, turning to
his companions. "We have travelled thus far without becoming known to
each other. Shall we tell our stories, here by this pleasant spring,
for our own pastime, and the benefit of these misguided young lovers?"

In accordance with this proposal, the whole party stationed themselves
round the stone cistern; the two children, being very weary, fell
asleep upon the damp earth, and the pretty Shaker girl, whose feelings
were those of a nun or a Turkish lady, crept as close as possible to
the female traveller, and as far as she well could from the unknown
men. The same person who had hitherto been the chief spokesman now
stood up, waving his hat in his hand, and suffered the moonlight to
fall full upon his front.

"In me," said he, with a certain majesty of utterance,--"in me, you
behold a poet."

Though a lithographic print of this gentleman is extant, it may be well
to notice that he was now nearly forty, a thin and stooping figure, in
a black coat, out at elbows; notwithstanding the ill condition of his
attire, there were about him several tokens of a peculiar sort of
foppery, unworthy of a mature man, particularly in the arrangement of
his hair which was so disposed as to give all possible loftiness and
breadth to his forehead. However, he had an intelligent eye, and, on
the whole, a marked countenance.

"A poet!" repeated the young Shaker, a little puzzled how to understand
such a designation, seldom heard in the utilitarian community where he
had spent his life. "Oh, ay, Miriam, he means a varse-maker, thee must
know."

This remark jarred upon the susceptible nerves of the poet; nor could
he help wondering what strange fatality had put into this young man's
mouth an epithet, which ill-natured people had affirmed to be more
proper to his merit than the one assumed by himself.

"True, I am a verse-maker," he resumed, "but my verse is no more than
the material body into which I breathe the celestial soul of thought.
Alas! how many a pang has it cost me, this same insensibility to the
ethereal essence of poetry, with which you have here tortured me again,
at the moment when I am to relinquish my profession forever! O Fate!
why hast thou warred with Nature, turning all her higher and more
perfect gifts to the ruin of me, their possessor? What is the voice of