requiring toil to dig them up, and
care to polish and brighten them; but often a delicious stream of
thought would gush out upon the page at once, like water sparkling up
suddenly in the desert; and when it had passed, I gnawed my pen
hopelessly, or blundered on with cold and miserable toil, as if there
were a wall of ice between me and my subject."

"Do you now perceive a corresponding difference," inquired I, "between
the passages which you wrote so coldly, and those fervid flashes of the
mind?"

"No," said Oberon, tossing the manuscripts on the table. "I find no
traces of the golden pen with which I wrote in characters of fire. My
treasure of fairy coin is changed to worthless dross. My picture,
painted in what seemed the loveliest hues, presents nothing but a faded
and indistinguishable surface. I have been eloquent and poetical and
humorous in a dream,--and behold! it is all nonsense, now that I am
awake."

My friend now threw sticks of wood and dry chips upon the fire, and
seeing it blaze like Nebuchadnezzar's furnace, seized the champagne
bottle, and drank two or three brimming bumpers, successively. The
heady liquor combined with his agitation to throw him into a species of
rage. He laid violent hands on the tales. In one instant more, their
faults and beauties would alike have vanished in a glowing purgatory.
But, all at once, I remembered passages of high imagination, deep
pathos, original thoughts, and points of such varied excellence, that
the vastness of the sacrifice struck me most forcibly. I caught his arm.

"Surely, you do not mean to burn them!" I exclaimed.

"Let me alone!" cried Oberon, his eyes flashing fire. "I will burn
them! Not a scorched syllable shall escape! Would you have me a damned
author?--To undergo sneers, taunts, abuse, and cold neglect, and faint
praise, bestowed, for pity's sake, against the giver's conscience! A
hissing and a laughing-stock to my own traitorous thoughts! An outlaw
from the protection of the grave,--one whose ashes every careless foot
might spurn, unhonored in life, and remembered scornfully in death! Am
I to bear all this, when yonder fire will insure me from the whole? No!
There go the tales! May my hand wither when it would write another!"

The deed was done. He had thrown the manuscripts into the hottest of
the fire, which at first seemed to shrink away, but soon curled around
them, and made them a part of its own fervent brightness. Oberon stood
gazing at