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.