table in the manner of the patriarchs. We will live in the
fashion of our magnanimous ancestors. It is in no cynical,
Diogenes-humour that I banish them from the house, but from a resolution
not to follow the example of this poor-spirited age, which encumbers
itself with extravagant superfluities out of a sordid economy."

"Exactly so," said Clara laughing. "Meanwhile, on the proceeds of those
and other superfluities, I invite you to a repast which, at all events,
shall not savour of extravagance."

So saying, they sat down to their bread-soup. He who had seen them,
whatever he might have thought of the dinner, would have envied those
who partook of it, so cheerful were they, so joyful, so full of freaks
and frolics, over their simple provender. When the bread-soup was
dispatched, Clara slyly brought from the stove a covered plate, and set
before her astonished husband--a reserve of potatoes! "Long live thou
second Sir Walter Raleigh!" cried Henry. Whereupon they drank to each
other out of the pure element, and _hob-nobbed_ with such glee, that
Clara looked anxiously the next moment at the glasses, to see that they
had not cracked them in their enthusiasm.

The dinner concluded, they drew their chairs, by way of variety, up to
the solitary window of their apartment, and amused themselves with
looking at the fantastic filigree work with which the frost had
decorated the inside of the glass.

"My aunt used to maintain," said Clara, "that the room was warmer with
this ice on the window than when the glass was clear."

"Possibly!" replied Henry. "But on the strength of this faith I would
not dispense with the fire."

"How wonderfully various," said Clara, "are these ice-flowers! Is it not
strange, one seems to have seen them all in reality, yet cannot give a
name to a single one of them? And look how one grows over the other, and
how the noble leaves seem to expand, even as we speak of them."

"It is your sweet breath, my dear, that is calling up these ghosts and
spirits of departed flowers," said Henry. "I imagine that some invisible
genius is reading all thy gentle and loving fancies, and pictures them
forth, as they arise, in these flower-phantoms; so that, by looking at
this glass, I know, even while you are silent, that your thoughts are
full of love--that they are dwelling upon me."

A fond kiss was the answer and the reward of this pretty speech.

Henry took up his journal, and beginning at the ante-penulti