outside of this package were postage stamps of the United States, and
the address: "Skavinski, Esq.," written on coarse canvas.

The old man, with aroused curiosity, cut the canvas, and saw books; he
took one in his hand, looked at it, and put it back; thereupon his hands
began to tremble greatly. He covered his eyes as if he did not believe
them; it seemed to him as if he were dreaming. The book was Polish,--
what did that mean? Who could have sent the book? Clearly, it did not
occur to him at the first moment that in the beginning of his light-
house career he had read in the Herald, borrowed from the consul, of the
formation of a Polish society in New York, and had sent at once to that
society half his month's salary, for which he had, moreover, no use on
the tower. The society had sent him the books with thanks. The books
came in the natural way; but at the first moment the old man could not
seize those thoughts. Polish books in Aspinwall, on his tower, amid his
solitude,--that was for him something uncommon, a certain breath from
past times, a kind of miracle. Now it seemed to him, as to those sailors
in the night, that something was calling him by name with a voice
greatly beloved and nearly forgotten. He sat for a while with closed
eyes, and was almost certain that, when he opened them, the dream would
be gone.

The package, cut open, lay before him, shone upon clearly by the
afternoon sun, and on it was an open book. When the old man stretched
his hand toward it again, he heard in the stillness the beating of his
own heart. He looked; it was poetry. On the outside stood printed in
great letters the title, underneath the name of the author. The name was
not strange to Skavinski; he saw that it belonged to the great poet,
[Footnote: Mickiewicz (pronounced Mitskyevich), the greatest poet of
Poland.] whose productions he had read in 1830 in Paris. Afterward, when