forting countenance of the sylvan slopes. I reach
a little grove of slender poplars, under the brow of a little hill,
from which issues a little limpid stream and runs gurgling through the
little ferns and bushes down the heath. I swing from the road and
follow this gentle rill; I can not find a better companion now. But
the wanton lures me to a village far from the road on the other side
of the gorge. Now, I must either retrace my steps to get to it by a
long detour, or cross the gorge, descending to the deep bottom and
ascending in a tangled and tortuous path to reach the main road on the
breast of the opposite escarpment. Here is a short-cut which is long
and weary. It lures me as the stream; it cheats me with a name. And
when I am again on the open road, I look back with a sigh of relief on
the dangers I had passed. I can forgive the luring rill, which still
smiles to me innocently from afar, but not the deluding, ensnaring
ravine. The muleteer who saw me struggling through the tangled bushes
up the pathless, hopeless steep, assures me that my mother is a pious
woman, else I would have slipped and gone into an hundred pieces among
the rocks below. 'Her prayers have saved thee,' quoth he; 'thank thy
God.'

"And walking together a pace, he points to the dizzy precipice around
which I climbed and adds: 'Thou seest that rock? I hallooed to thee
when thou wert creeping around it, but thou didst not hear me. From
that same rock a woodman fell last week, and, falling, looked like a
potted bird. He must have died before he reached the ground. His bones
are scattered among those rocks. Thank thy God and thy mother. Her
prayers have saved thee.'

"My dear mother, how long since I saw thee, how long since I thought
of thee. My loving mother, even the rough, rude spirit of a muleteer
can see in the unseen the beauty and benevolence of such devotion as
thine. The words of this dusky son of the road, coming as through the
trumpet of revelation to rebuke me, sink deep in my heart and draw
tears from mine eyes. For art thou not ever praying for thy grievous
son, and for his salvation? How many beads each night dost thou tell,
how many hours dost thou prostrate thyself before the Virgin,
sobbing, obsecrating, beating thy breast? And all for one, who until
now, ever since he left Baalbek, did not think on thee.--Let me kiss
thee, O my Brother, for thy mild rebuke. Let me kiss thee for
reminding me of my mother.--No, I can not furth