The village Post Office, with its clock and letter-box, its
postmistress lost in tales of love-lorn Dukes and coroneted woe,
and the sallow-faced grocer watching from his window opposite,
is the scene of a daily crisis in my life, when every afternoon
I walk there through the country lanes and ask that well-read
young lady for my letters. I always expect good news and
cheques; and then, of course, there is the magical Fortune which
is coming, and word of it may reach me any day. What it is, this
strange Felicity, or whence it shall come, I have no notion; but
I hurry down in the morning to find the news on the breakfast
table, open telegrams in delighted panic, and say to myself
"Here it is!" when at night I hear wheels approaching along the
road. So, happy in the hope of Happiness, and not greatly
concerned with any other interest or ambition, I live on in my
quiet, ordered house; and so I shall live perhaps until the end.
Is it, indeed, merely the last great summons and revelation for
which I am waiting? I do not know.




_The Busy Bees_


Sitting for hours idle in the shade of an apple tree, near
the garden-hives, and under the aerial thoroughfares of those
honey-merchants--sometimes when the noonday heat is loud with
their minute industry, or when they fall in crowds out of the