ery object. To Wauna it was a revelation of magnificence in
nature beyond her contriving.
"How grand," she exclaimed, "are the revelations of nature in your
world! To look upon them, it seems to me, would broaden and deepen the
mind with the very vastness of their splendor. Nature has been more
bountiful to you than to Mizora. The day with its heart of fire, and the
night with its pale beauty are grander than ours. They speak of vast and
incomprehensible power."
When I took Wauna to the observatory, and she looked upon the countless
multitudes of worlds and suns revolving in space so far away that a sun
and its satellites looked like a ball of mist, she said that words could
not describe her sensations.
"To us," she said, "the leaves of Nature's book are the winds and waves,
the bud and bloom and decay of seasons. But here every leaf is a world.
A mighty hand has sprinkled the suns like fruitful seeds across the
limitless fields of space. Can human nature contemplate a scene so grand
that reaches so far beyond the grasp of mind, and not feel its own
insignificance, and the littleness of selfish actions? And yet you can
behold these myriads of worlds and systems of worlds wheeling in the dim
infinity of space--a spectacle awful in its vastness--and turn to the
practice of narrow superstitions?"
At last the shores of my native land greeted my longing eyes, and the
familiar scenes of my childhood drew near. But when, after nearly twenty
years absence, I stood on the once familiar spot, the graves of my
heart's dear ones were all that was mine. My little one had died soon
after my exile. My father had soon followed. Suspected, and finally
persecuted by the government, my husband had fled the country, and,
nearly as I could discover, had sought that universal asylum for the
oppressed of all nations--the United States. And thither I turned my
steps.
In my own country and in France, the friends who had known me in
girlhood were surprised at my youthful appearance. I did not explain the
cause of it to them, nor did I mention the people or country from whence
I had come. Wauna was my friend and a foreigner--that was all.
The impression she made was all that I had anticipated. Her unusual
beauty and her evident purity attracted attention wherever she went. The
wonderful melody of her singing was much commented upon, but in Mizora
she had been considered but an indifferent singer. But I had made a
mistake in my antici
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