for anything. He went on writing his verses, and receiving the reward,
such as it was, of having placed on record the thoughts which had come
to him, so that he might at will recall them. Neither had he any thought
of the mental soil which was thus slowly gathering for the possible
growth of an unknown seed, fit for growing and developing in that same
unknown soil.

One day there arrived in that cold Northern city a certain cold,
sunshiny morning, gay and sparkling, and with it the beginning of what,
for want of a better word, we may call his fate. He knew nothing of its
approach, had not the slightest prevision that the divinity had that
moment put his hand to the shaping of his rough-hewn ends. It was early
October by the calendar, but leaves brown and spotted and dry lay
already in little heaps on the pavement--heaps made and unmade
continually, as if for the sport of the keen wind that now scattered
them with a rush, and again, extemporizing a little evanescent
whirlpool, gathered a fresh heap upon the flags, again to rush asunder,
as in direst terror of the fresh-invading wind, determined yet again to
scatter them, a broken rout of escaping fugitives. Along the pavement,
seemingly in furtherance of the careless design of the wind, a girl went
heedlessly scushling along among the unresting and unresisting leaves,
making with her rather short skirt a mimic whirlwind of her own. Her
eyes were fixed on the ground, and she seemed absorbed in anxious
thought, which thought had its origin in one of the commonest causes of
human perplexity--the need of money, and the impossibility of devising a
scheme by which to procure any. It was but a few weeks since her father
had died, leaving behind him such a scanty provision for his widow and
child that only by the utmost care and coaxing were they able from the
first to make it meet their necessities. Nor, indeed, would it have been
possible for them to subsist had not a brother of the widow supplemented