fisted countrymen.

"Come," said I to the damsel of gay attire, "shall we visit all the
wonders of the world together?"

She understood the metaphor at once; though indeed it would not much
have troubled me, if she had assented to the literal meaning of my
words. The mahogany box was placed in a proper position, and I peeped
in through its small round magnifying window, while the girl sat by my
side, and gave short descriptive sketches, as one after another the
pictures were unfolded to my view. We visited together, at least our
imaginations did, full many a famous city, in the streets of which I
had long yearned to tread; once, I remember, we were in the harbor of
Barcelona, gazing townwards; next, she bore me through the air to
Sicily, and bade me look up at blazing AEtna; then we took wing to
Venice, and sat in a gondola beneath the arch of the Rialto; and anon
she sat me down among the thronged spectators at the coronation of
Napoleon. But there was one scene, its locality she could not tell,
which charmed my attention longer than all those gorgeous palaces and
churches, because the fancy hammed me, that I myself, the preceding
summer, had beheld just such a humble meeting-house, in just such a
pine-surrounded nook, among our own green mountains. All these
pictures were tolerably executed, though far inferior to the girl's
touches of description; nor was it easy to comprehend, how in so few
sentences, and these, as I supposed, in a language foreign to her, she
contrived to present an airy copy of each varied scene. When we had
travelled through the vast extent of the mahogany box, I looked into
my guide's face.

"Where are you going, my pretty maid?" inquired I, in the words of an