Said a writer of our acquaintance, no matter who, since no one read or thought of him:—­“The writer of these idle lines finds no difficulty in painting for himself a Titian picture, in which, as in his life-picture, his own figure lies on the canvas.  Long ago—­a long, long time ago—­in fact, when he was a boy, and loved dearly a child like himself, a child who is now a fair and beautiful-browed woman, and who smiles with a dreamy, thoughtful expression, when his face comes to her—­long ago, flowers were very bright in the bright May day, by a country brookside.  The butter-cups were over all the hills, for children to put under their chins, and pea-blossoms, very much like lady-slippers, swayed prettily in the wind.  Beneath the feet of the boy and girl—­she was a merry, bright-eyed child! how I love her still!—­broke crocuses and violets, and a thousand wild flowers, fresh and full of fairy beauty.  The grass was green and soft, and the birds rose through the air on fluttering wings, singing and rejoicing, and the clouds floated over them as only clouds in May can float, quickly, hopefully, with a dash of changeful April in them—­not like those of August:  for the May cloud is a maiden, a child, full of life and joy, running and playing, and looking playfully back at the winds as they rustle on—­not August-like—­a thoughtful ripened beauty, large, lazy, and contemplative, whose spring of youth has passed, whose summer has arrived, in all its wealth, and power, and languid splendor.  Well, they wandered—­the boy and girl—­on the bright May day, pleasantly across the hills, and along the brook, which ran merrily over the pebbles as bright as diamonds.  That boy has now become a man, and he has vainly sought, in all the glittering pursuits of life, an adequate recompense for the death of those soft hours.  Having gone, as all things must go, they left no equivalent in the future.  But not, therefore, in sadness does he write this:  rather in deep joy, and as though he had said—­

  ’Give me a golden pen, and let me lean
  On heaped-up flowers—­’

“So wholly flooded is his heart with the memory of that young, frank face.  She wore a pink dress, he recollects—­all children should wear either pink or white—­and her hair was in long, bright curls, and her eyes were diamonds, full of light.  He thought the birds were envious of her singing, when she carolled clearly in the bright May morning.  He wove her a garland of flowers for her hair, and she blushed as she took it from his hands.  She had on a small gold ring, and a red bracelet; and since that time he has loved red bracelets more than all barbaric pearls and gold.  In those times, the trees were greener than at present, the birds sang more sweetly, and the streams ran far more merrily.  They thought so at least, as they sat under a large oak, and he read to her, with shadowy, loving eyes, nearly full of happy tears, old songs, that ’dallied with the innocence of love, like the old age.’  And so the evening went into the west, and they returned, and all the night and long days afterward her smile shone on him, brightening his life as it does now.”