We carried him to a neighbouring sunny parlour, where ivy embowers
all the walls and the sun lies all day. There he revived a little,
danced up and down, perched on a green spray that was wreathed across
the breast of a Psyche, and looked then like a little flitting soul
returning to its rest. Towards evening he drooped; and, having been
nursed and warmed and cared for, he was put to sleep on a green twig
laid on the piano. In that sleep the little head drooped--nodded--
fell; and little Hum went where other bright dreams go--to the Land
of the Hereafter.



OUR COUNTRY NEIGHBOURS



We have just built our house in rather an out-of-the-way place--on
the bank of a river, and under the shade of a patch of woods which is
a veritable remain of quite an ancient forest. The checkerberry and
partridge-plum, with their glossy green leaves and scarlet berries,
still carpet the ground under its deep shadows; and prince's-pine and
other kindred evergreens declare its native wildness,--for these are
children of the wild woods, that never come after plough and harrow
have once broken a soil.

When we tried to look out the spot for our house, we had to get a
surveyor to go before us and cut a path through the dense underbrush
that was laced together in a general network of boughs and leaves,
and grew so high as to overtop our heads. Where the house stands,