ief, or a snowball. It was a white
dove flying from the direction of the village.

It flew, and flew onward, always straight onward ... and vanished behind
the forest.

Several moments passed--the same cruel silence still reigned.... But
behold! Now _two_ handkerchiefs are fluttering, _two_ snowballs are
floating back; it is _two_ white doves wending their way homeward in
even flight.

And now, at last, the storm has broken loose--and the fun begins!

I could hardly reach home.--The wind shrieked and darted about like a
mad thing; low-hanging rusty-hued clouds swirled onward, as though rent
in bits; everything whirled, got mixed up, lashed and rocked with the
slanting columns of the furious downpour; the lightning flashes blinded
with their fiery green hue; abrupt claps of thunder were discharged like
cannon; there was a smell of sulphur....

But under the eaves, on the very edge of a garret window, side by side
sit the two white doves,--the one which flew after its companion, and
the one which it brought and, perhaps, saved.

Both have ruffled up their plumage, and each feels with its wing the
wing of its neighbour....

It is well with them! And it is well with me as I gaze at them....
Although I am alone ... alone, as always.

May, 1879.

TO-MORROW! TO-MORROW!

How empty, and insipid, and insignificant is almost every day which we
have lived through! How few traces it leaves behind it! In what a
thoughtlessly-stupid manner have those hours flown past, one after
another!

And, nevertheless, man desires to exist; he prizes life, he hopes in it,
in himself, in the future.... Oh, what blessings he expects from the
future!

And why does he imagine that other future days will not resemble the one
which has just passed?

But he does not imagine this. On the whole, he is not fond of
thinking--and it is well that he does not.

"There, now, to-morrow, to-morrow!" he comforts himself--until that
"to-morrow" over-throws him into the grave.

Well--and once in the grave,--one ceases, willy-nilly, to think.

May, 1879.

NATURE

I dreamed that I had entered a vast subterranean chamber with a lofty,
arched roof. It was completely filled by some sort of even light, also
subterranean.

In the very centre of the chamber sat a majestic woman in a flowing robe
green in hue. With her head bowed on her hand, she seemed to be immersed
in profound meditation.

I immediately understood that this woma