I lift my eyes to the
looking-glass, and perceive myself alone, unless those be the
mermaid's features retiring into the depths of the mirror with a
tender and melancholy smile.
Ah! One feels a chilliness--not bodily, but about the heart--and,
moreover, a foolish dread of looking behind him, after these pastimes.
I can imagine precisely how a magician would sit down in gloom and
terror after dismissing the shadows that had personated dead or
distant people and stripping his cavern of the unreal splendor which
had changed it to a palace.
And now for a moral to my reverie. Shall it be that, since fancy can
create so bright a dream of happiness, it were better to dream on from
youth to age than to awake and strive doubtfully for something real?
Oh, the slight tissue of a dream can no more preserve us from the
stern reality of misfortune than a robe of cobweb could repel the
wintry blast. Be this the moral, then: In chaste and warm affections,
humble wishes and honest toil for some useful end there is health for
the mind and quiet for the heart, the prospect of a happy life and the
fairest hope of heaven.
THE AMBITIOUS GUEST.
One September night a family had gathered round their hearth and piled
it high with the driftwood of mountain-streams, the dry cones of the
pine, and the splintered ruins of great trees that had come crashing
down the precipice. Up the chimney roared the fire, and brightened the
room with its broad blaze.
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