Even as I, in vain.
Come--wake up, Gerda!
Come out and play in the lane!

Closed thine eyes,
Gently wise,
Dost thou dream the while?
Falls my kiss
All amiss,
Waketh not a smile!
Sweet mouth, is't feigning this?
Then do not longer feign.
Come--wake up, Gerda!
Come out and play in the lane!

Forehead Bold,
White and cold;
Sealed thy lips and all;
I am made
Half afraid
In this lonely hall.
Night cometh quick through the glade!
I fear it is all in vain,--
All too late, Gerda,--
Too late to play in the lane!

* * * * *

THE GOOD WIFE: A NORWEGIAN STORY.

PART I.

NOTHING LOST BY GOOD HUMOR.

For more than a month I had been ransacking my memory in search of some
story or narrative to offer our readers, but with rather poor success. I
thought of all the good things I had ever heard, and tumbled and tossed
my books in vain--nothing could I find that was suitable for either
children or parents. So I was, very reluctantly, about to abandon the
enterprise, when it chanced that, being unable to compose myself to
sleep, a few nights since, I took up, according to my custom on such
occasions, an old copy of Montaigne, the usual companion of my vigils,
the fellow-occupant of my pillow, and the only moralist whose musings
one can read with pleasure on the wrong side of forty.

I opened the _Essays_ carelessly, for each and every page of them is
precious and replete with themes for meditation. In so doing, I alighted
upon the chapter entitled, 'Of three Good Women,'--which commences thus:
'They are not to be found by the dozen, as every one knows, and
especially not in the duties of married life, for that is a market full
of such thorny circumstances that it is no easy matter for a woman's
will to keep whole and sound in it for any length of time.'

'Montaigne is an impertinent fellow!' I exclaimed, slamming to the book.
'What? this close reader of antiquity, this fine analyst of the human
heart, has been able to find only three good women, only three devoted
wives, in all the Greek and Roman annals! This is playing the joker out
of season. Goodness is the special attribute of woman. Every married
woman is good, or supposed to be such. I bethink me, too, that our old
jurists always make the law presume this goodness to exist, at the
outset,'

Thus meditating, I wandered into my library, and there took