twilight, the inscrutable silence, like a God-fearing discoverer upon
a new and vast sea bursting upon him through forest glooms, and in the
fervor of whose impassioned gaze, a millenial and poetic world arises,
and man need no longer die to be happy.

"My companions naturally deserted me, for I had grown wearily grave
and abstracted: and, unable to resist the allurements of my
spectacles, I was constantly lost in the world, of which those
companions were part, yet of which they knew nothing.

"I grew cold and hard, almost morose; people seemed to me so blind and
unreasonable. They did the wrong thing. They called green, yellow; and
black, white. Young men said of a girl, 'What a lovely, simple
creature!' I looked, and there was only a glistening wisp of straw,
dry and hollow. Or they said, 'What a cold, proud beauty!' I looked,
and lo! a Madonna, whose heart held the world. Or they said, 'What a
wild, giddy girl!' and I saw a glancing, dancing mountain stream,
pure as the virgin snows whence it flowed, singing through sun and
shade, over pearls and gold dust, slipping along unstained by weed or
rain, or heavy foot of cattle, touching the flowers with a dewy
kiss,--a beam of grace, a happy song, a line of light, in the dim and
troubled landscape.

"My grandmother sent me to school, but I looked at the master, and saw
that he was a smooth round ferule, or an improper noun, or a vulgar
fraction, and refused to obey him. Or he was a piece of string, a rag,
a willow-wand, and I had a contemptuous pity. But one was a well of
cool, deep water, and looking suddenly in, one day, I saw the stars.

"That one gave me all my schooling. With him I used to walk by the