st
Come, like a calm upon the mid-sea brine,
Hushing its billowy breast--
The quiet of that moment too is thine;
It breathes of Him who keeps
The vast and helpless city while it sleeps."

"I never saw the city when it was asleep," said Faith, smiling. "It
didn't look to-day as if it could sleep. But, Endecott, I am sure all
the pretty part of those words comes from where we have been."

"The images, yes. But connect any spot of earth with heaven, by any
tie, and it must have a certain sort of grandeur. You have been working
in brick and mortar to-day, Mignonette, to-morrow I must give you a
bird's-eye view."

Faith was silent a minute; and then said, "It don't look a happy place
to me, Endecott."

"No, it is too human. You want an elm tree or a patch of dandelions
between every two houses."

"That wouldn't do," said Faith, "unless the people could be less
ragged, and dirty, and uneasy; and their houses too. There's nothing
like it in Pattaquasset."

"I have great confidence in the comforting and civilizing power of elm
trees and green grass," said Mr. Linden. "But Carlyle says 'Man is not
what you can call a happy animal, his appetite for sweet victual is so
enormous;' and perhaps New York suffers as much from the fact that
everybody wants _more_, as that some have too little and others too
much."

"Do _these_ people want more?" said Faith softly.

"Without doubt! So does everybody in New York but me."

"But why must people do that in New York, when they don't do it in
Pattaquasset?" said Faith, who was very like mignonette at the moment.

"The appetite grows with indulgence, or the possibility of it. Besides,
little bird, in Pattaquasset you take all this breeze of humanity
winnowed through elm branches. There, you know, 'My soul into the
boughs does glide.'"

"No," said Faith; "it is not that. When my soul glides nowhere, and
there are no branches, either; in the Roscoms' house, Endecott--and
poor Mrs. Dow's, and Sally Lowndes',--people don't look as they look
here. I don't mean _here_, in Madison Square--though yes I do, too;
there was that raspberry girl; and others, worse, I have seen even
here. But I have been in other places--Mr. Pulteney and his sisters
took me all the way to the great stone church, Endecott."

"Well, Sunbeam, it has been a bright day for every raspberry girl that
has come in your way. What else did you see there."--"I saw the church."

"Not the invisible" sai