gh which
seems to break from the bottom of his heart. You will find in them an
answer.

How brightly the sun shines in through the windows of the room, gilding
all around with its own radiance, and giving life and light to the very
statues! It shines even on his head, but fails in warming his bosom; it
annoys him, uncongenial as it is with his sad thoughts, and he rises and
pulls down the blind, and then restlessly wanders forth into the open air.
The day is close, for summer is still at its height, and Mordant Lindsay
seeks the shade of a group of trees and lies down, and presently he
sleeps, and the sun (as it declines) throws its shadows on nearer objects;
and now it rests on him, and as it hovers there, takes the form of that
companion of his childhood, who for long, with a pertinacity he could not
account for, seemed ever avoiding his path, and flying from him when most
anxiously pursued; and he sees again those scenes of his past life before
him dimly pictured through the vista of many years, and his dream runs
thus:

He is a child at play, young and innocent, as yet untainted by worldly
ambition, and standing by him is a beautiful figure, with long golden
hair, very bright, and shining like spun glass or the rays of the summer
sun. Her eyes seem born for laughter, so clear, so mirthful, so full of
joy, and her spotless robe flows around her, making every thing it comes
in contact with graceful as itself; and she has wings, for Happiness is
fickle and flies away, so soon as man proves false to himself and unworthy
of her. She joins the child in his gambols, and hand in hand with him
sports beside him, gathering the same flowers that he gathers, looking
through his smiling eyes as she echoes his happy laughter; and then over
meadow, past ditches, and through tangled bushes, in full chase after a
butterfly. In the eagerness of the sport he falls, and the gaudy insect
(all unconscious of being the originator of so many conflicting hopes and
fears) flutters onward in full enjoyment of the sun and the light, and
soon it is too far off to renew the chase. Tears, like dewdrops, fill the
child's eyes, and he looks around in vain for his companion of the day.
The grass is not so green without her; even the bird's song is discordant,
and, tired, he sadly wends his way toward home. "Oh, dear mamma!" he
exclaims, brightening up, as he sees his mother coming toward him, and
running to her finds a ready sympathy in his disappo