er more. A balm
springs up in every wound. Over the hills, and far away beyond their
utmost purple rim, and deep into the dying days the happy love-born one
followed her love, happy to exchange her sylvan immortality for the
spasm of mortal life,--happy, in her human self-abnegation, to lie
close on his heart and whisper close in his ear, though he knew only
the loving voice and never the loving lips. Through the world they
passed, the Poet and his mystic viol. It gathered to itself the
melodies that fluttered over sea and land,--songs of the mountains, and
songs of the valleys,--murmurs of love, and the trumpet-tones of
war,--bugle-blast of huntsman on the track of the chamois, and mother's
lullaby to the baby at her breast. All that earth had of sweetness the
nymph drew into her viol-home, and poured it forth anew in strains of
more than mortal harmony. The fire and fervor of human hearts, the
quiet ripple of inland waters, the anthem of the stormy sea, the voices
of the flowers and the birds, their melody to the song of her who knew
them all.

The Poet died. Died, too, sweet Arborine, swooning away in the fierce
grasp of this stranger Sorrow, to enter by the black gate of death into
the full presence and recognition of him by loving whom she had learned
to be.

The viol passed into strange hands, and wandered down the centuries,
but its olden echoes linger still. Fragrance of Southern woods,
coolness of shaded waters, inspiration of mountain-breezes, all the
secret forces of Nature that the wood-nymph knew, and the joy, the
passion, and the pain that throb only in a woman's heart, lie still,
silent under the silent strings, but wakening into life at the touch of
a royal hand.

Do you not believe my story? But I have seen the viol and the royal
hand!

CHERI

Cheri is the Canary-bird,--a yellow bird with a white tail, when the
cat leaves him any tail at all. He came as a gift, and I welcomed him,
but without gratitude. For a gift is nothing. Always behind the gift
stands the giver, and under the gift lies the motive. The gift itself
has no character. It may be a blunder, a bribe, an offering, according
to the nature and design of the giver; and you are outraged, or
magnanimous, or grateful. Cheri came to me with no love-token under
his soft wings,--only the "good riddance" of his heartless master.
Those little black eyes had twinkled, those shining silken feathers had
gleamed, that round th