LITMIR.BIZ

      as he invariably does when annoyed. After using up a variety of popular airs, the shadow of his good-humor returned to him.

      "Ralph," he said, taking my hand, "I have a great respect for you. I don't know why, to be frank, but I have. I like your little song of – what do you call it? – in Putnam's Monthly, and your prose sketches in the Knickerbocker; but don't be a fool, Ralph!"

      With which piece of friendly advice, he put on his brown felt hat, drew it over his brows, and stalked out of the room, with

      like Mr. Hamlet's father.

      I saw no more of Barescythe for two weeks.

      The summer months flew away.

      The nights were growing longer. The air had a vein of sparkling cold in it; at every gust the trees in the Parade Ground shook down golden ingots; and the grass-plots, and the graveled walks, and the marble bowl of the fountain, were paved with emerald and amethyst – a mosaic flooring of tinted leaves. The clouds were haggard faces, and the wind wailed like a broken heart. Indeed,

      and Mrs. Muggins had made a fire in my grate!

      Blessings on him who invented fire-places! A poor day-dreamer's benediction go with him! The world in the grate! I have watched its fantastic palaces and crimson inhabitants – dipped my pen, as it were, into its stained rivers, and written their grotesqueness! Dizzy bridges, feudal castles, great yawning caves, and red-hot gnomes, are to be found in the grate; mimic volcanos, and ships that sail into sparry grottos, and delicate fire-shells with pink and blue lips!

      Crash!

      The coals sink down, and new figures are born, like the transient pictures in a kaleidescope. So it came to pass that I dozed over the metempsychosis of my fire-world, and commenced the novel.

      Give me crisp winter days for writing, and the long snowy nights for dreamy slumber.

      O antique humorist, quaint-mouthed Sancho Panza! with you, I say, "Blessings on the man who invented sleep!" Sleep, pleasant sleep! – that little airy nothing on the eyelids! – that little spell of thought which comes from no place and goes nowhere! – which comes upon us silently and splendidly, like a falling star, and trails its golden fancies on our waking hours. Sleep for the young – fresh, dewy sleep! Sleep for the sick! Sleep for the weary and disconsolate – sweet dreams and sweet forgetfulness for them! Smooth the white hairs of the old; place thy invisible fingers on their lips; close their eyes gently, gently. Sleep, and let them pass into nothingness!

      In a dreamy mood, half awake and half asleep, I filled sheet after sheet with my curious back-handed chirography. The white feathery snow came down cygnet-soft, and I wrote. I heard the wind ditties in the chimney, the merry wrangling of sleigh-bells, the sonorous clash of fire-bells, and the manuscript grew under my pen, as if by magic. I came to love the nurslings of my fancy as no one else will. I liked the cold, cynical features of Mr. Flint, with his undertaker's aspect; the child-spirit, Bell; Daisy Snarle's eyes; the heart-broken old sailor; the pale book-keeper; Tim, the office boy; Mr. Hardwill, the great publisher; Joe Wilkes, and all of them!

      Mrs. Muggins occasionally looked in on me.

      Mrs. Muggins' regard for me was increasing. She never left the coal-scuttle on the stairs for my benefit, as she used to; she was eternally hearing my bell ring when it didn't, and answering it so promptly when it did, that I began to think that she lived night and day just outside my door.

      Pleasant Mrs. Muggins!

      I tried not to feel elated at these little widowy attentions; but los hombres son mortales.

      She handed me my coffee with a motherly tenderness that was perfectly touching. She looked at me with the eyes of Solicitude, and spoke with the lips of culminating Respect; and once, in a burst of confidence, she told me that she had six orphan sons, who were "sealurs."

      My respect increased for Mrs. Muggins. My novel might run through only one edition, but she, – she had six editions of herself afloat! And I thought that, after all, a woman like her who had produced a half a dozen Neptunes, founded perhaps a half a dozen races, was rendering more service to this apple-like globe, than one poor devil of an author prolifically pregnant with indifferent books.

      I spoke to Barescythe about it, and it was pleasant to have him coincide with me once.

      It is an agreeable fact, that

      The new year was four months old. The flowers were teething: the tiny robins were able to go alone, and above the breezy hum of many thousand voices, above the monotonous and ocean-like jar of omnibus wheels, I could hear the babbling of hyaline rills in pleasant woodland places! I could not see the silver threads of water winding in and out among the cool young grass; I could not guess where they were; but through the city smoke, over the dingy chimney-tops, they spake to me with kindly voices!

      I knew that daisies were fulling in sunny meadows, and that the dandelion trailed its gold by the dusty road-sides: for

      I knew it by the geranium at my window. It had put forth two sickly leaves. Two sickly leaves for me, and the world alive with vernal things! Spring, thou Queen of the Twelve! Dainty, dewy Spring —

      when I write of thee! Thy breath is the amber sunshine, and thy foot-prints are violets! Hide Winter in thy mantle: crown his cold brow with mignionette: hang morning-glories on his icicles: keep him from me forever!

      "Barry," said I, "the sunshine has taken me by the hand, to lead me into a sweet New-England village. There is my manuscript. Read it, if you can, condemn it, if you will, and tell me what you think of it when I return."

      That awful critic put Daisy's Necklace under his arm, and walked away – a victim to friendship, a literary Damon of the Nineteenth Century.

      I

      As children gathering pebbles on the shore.

      No daintie flower or herbe that growes on grownd,

      No arborett with painted blossomes drest

      And smelling sweete, but there it might be found

      To bud out faire, and throwe her sweete smels al around.

      I.

      THE LITTLE CASTLE-BUILDERS