rn home I think we can understand him better.
He is singing again and again, with a cadence that never wearies,
"Sweet--sweet--Canada, canada, canada!" The Canadians, when they came
across the sea, remembering the nightingale of southern France, baptised
this little gray minstrel their rossignol, and the country ballads are
full of his praise. Every land has its nightingale, if we only have
the heart to hear him. How distinct his voice is--how personal, how
confidential, as if he had a message for us!

There is a breath of fragrance on the cool shady air beside our little
stream, that seems familiar. It is the first week of September. Can
it be that the twin-flower of June, the delicate Linnaea borealis, is
blooming again? Yes, here is the threadlike stem lifting its two frail
pink bells above the bed of shining leaves. How dear an early flower
seems when it comes back again and unfolds its beauty in a St. Martin's
summer! How delicate and suggestive is the faint, magical odour! It is
like a renewal of the dreams of youth.

"And need we ever grow old?" asked my lady Greygown, as she sat that
evening with the twin-flower on her breast, watching the stars come out
along the edge of the cliffs, and tremble on the hurrying tide of the
river. "Must we grow old as well as gray? Is the time coming when all
life will be commonplace and practical, and governed by a dull 'of
course'? Shall we not always find adventures and romances, and a few
blossoms returning, even when the season grows late?"

"At least," I answered, "let us believe in the possibility, for to doubt
it is to destroy it. If we can only come back to nature together every
year, and consider the flowers and the birds, and confess our faults and
mistakes and our unbelief under these silent stars, and hear the river
murmuring our absolution, we shall die young, even though we live long:
we shall have a treasure of memories which will be like the twin-flower,
always a double blossom on a single stem, and carry with us into the
unseen world something which will make it worth while to be immortal."

1894.

A SONG AFTER SUNDOWN

"There's no music like a little river's. It plays the same tune (and
that's the favourite) over and over again, and yet does not weary of it
like men fiddlers. It takes the mind out of doors; and though we should
be grateful for good houses, there is, after all, no house like god's
out-of-doors. And lastly, sir, it quiets a man do