th, like the flitting light of night, and
lead us into bogs and quagmires.

Yet it is beautiful to realize that we have had hopes; they are the
past light of the soul, and their glow yet lingers in this gloomy
twilight, reminding one that there has been a sunny day, and
memories of things pleasant and joyous mingle with the present
loneliness and cheerless desolation.

Words, that excited hopes, that awoke thrilling emotions, linger on
the listening ear. But, ah! the heart grows very sad, when the ear
listens in vain, and the yearning, unsatisfied spirit realizes that
the words, so loved, so fondly dwelt upon, were but words, empty,
vain words. But, to have believed them, was a fleeting blindness.
They served for food to the yearning heart, when they were given,
and shall the traveller through the desolate wilderness look back
with scorn upon the bread and water that once satisfied his hunger
and thirst, even though it is now withheld? No--let him be thankful
for the past; otherwise, the keen biting hunger, the thirsty anguish
of the soul, will have a bitterness and a gall in it, that will
corrode his whole being. Ah! what is this being? if one could but
understand one's own existence, what a relief it would be; but to
understand nothing--alas!

Life is a weary burden. I feel weighed down with it, and I do not
know what is in the pack that bows me so wearily to the earth. I do
know that in it are agonized feelings, bitter disappointments, and a
desolation of the heart. But there is a something else in it; for,
now and then, come vague, vast perceptions of a dim future; but I
shut my eyes. I cannot look beyond the earth. I could have been
satisfied here with a very little; a little of human love would have
made me so happy. Yes, I would never have dreamed of an unknown
heaven. Heaven! What is heaven? I remember when I was a little
child, lying on my bed in the early morning twilight (ah! that was a
twilight, unlike this, which is sinking into a black night, for that
was ushering in the beautiful golden day), but it was twilight when
I looked through the uncurtained window; and through the
intertwining branches of a noble tree I saw the far, dim, misty
sky--and I wondered, in my childish way, "if heaven is like that;"
and all at once it seemed to me that the dim, distant sky opened,
and my dead mother's face looked out upon me so beautifully, I did
not know her, for she died when I was an unconscious infant, and yet