around the pallid moon, and bear her softly on their snowy
bosoms. But she moves on, impelled. She sweeps beyond the
sad clouds. Deeper and deeper into the darkness. Closer and
closer the Shadow clutches her in his inexorable arms. Wan and
weird becomes her face, wrathful and wild the astonished winds;
and for all her science and her faith, the Earth trembles in
the night, and a hush of awe quivers through the angry,
agitated air. On, still on, till the fair and smiling moon is
but a dull and tawny orb, with no beauty to be desired; on,
still on, till even that cold, coppery light wanes into sullen
darkness. Whether it is a cloud kindly hiding the humbled
queen, or whether the queen is indeed merged in the abyss of
the Shadow, I cannot tell, and it is dismal waiting to see.
The wildness is gone with the moon, and there is nothing left
but a dark night. I wonder how long before she will reappear?
Are the people in the moon staring through an eclipse of the
Sun? I should like to see her come out again, and clothe
herself in splendor. I think I will go back to Walden. Ah!
even my philosopher, aping Homer, nods. It shimmers a little,
on the lake, among the mountains--of the moon.

I declare! I believe I have been asleep. What of it? It is
just as well. I have no doubt the moon will come out again all
right,--which is more than I shall do if I go on in this way.
I feel already as if the top of my head was coming off. Once
I was very unhappy, and I sat up all night to make the most of
it. It was many hundred years ago, when I was younger than I
am now, and did not know that misery was not a thing to be
caressed and cosseted and coddled, but a thing to be taken,
neck and heels, and turned out doors. So I sat up to revel in