slumbering embers on the hearth send forth a gleam which palely
illuminates the whole outer room, and flickers through the door of the
bedchamber, but cannot quite dispel its obscurity. Your eye searches
for whatever may remind you of the living world. With eager
minuteness, you take note of the table near the fireplace, the book
with an ivory knife between its leaves, the unfolded letter, the hat,
and the fallen glove. Soon the flame vanishes, and with it the whole
scene is gone, though its image remains an instant in your mind's eye,
when darkness has swallowed the reality. Throughout the chamber,
there is the same obscurity as before, but not the same gloom within
your breast. As your head falls back upon the pillow, you think--in a
whisper be it spoken--how pleasant in these night solitudes would be
the rise and fall of a softer breathing than your own, the slight
pressure of a tenderer bosom, the quiet throb of a purer heart,
imparting its peacefulness to your troubled one, as if the fond
sleeper were involving you in her dream.

Her influence is over you, though she have no existence but in that
momentary image. You sink down in a flowery spot, on the borders of
sleep and wakefulness, while your thoughts rise before you in
pictures, all disconnected, yet all assimilated by a pervading
gladsomeness and beauty. The wheeling of gorgeous squadrons, that
glitter in the sun, is succeeded by the merriment of children round
the door of a school-house, beneath the glimmering shadow of old
trees, at the corner of a rustic lane. You stand in the sunny rain of
a summer shower, and wander among the sunny trees of an autumnal wood,
and look upward at the brightest of all rainbows, overarching the
unbroken sheet of snow, on the American side of Niagara. Your mind
struggles pleasantly between the dancing radiance round the hearth of
a young man and his recent bride, and the twittering flight of birds