As I stood listening to the music of the sea-breeze in the pine-forests below, and watching the ships sinking into the ocean from view or dropping through the sky into sight at the rim of the horizon, and the clouds changing their picturesque sunrise-dress for a uniform of sober white, forming into rank and file, marching and countermarching, sending off scouts into the far distance and foraging-parties to scour the yellow fields of air, pitching their tents and placing sentinels on guard around the camp,—­amusing myself with fashioning quaint, arabesque fancies,—­a sort of intellectual whittling-habit I have when idle,—­I was roused from my reverie by the creaking of an iron gate.

Descending a few steps into a cluster of trees, I saw through their leafy lattice-work, in an inclosure ornamented with rose-bushes and other flowering shrubs, a young woman, richly dressed in black, kneeling by the side of a new-made grave.  The mound, evidently covering a full-grown person, was nicely laid at the top with carefully cut sods, the dark edges of which projected a little over the lighter-colored gravel that sloped gradually down to the greensward.  I was not long in becoming satisfied that the person I saw was a young widow at the grave of her husband, now three or four weeks dead, hither on her accustomed morning visit to display her love and affection for his memory.

Bowing her head, for a few moments she gave way to sobs and weeping, and then, removing the cover from a little willow basket, which stood by her side, she took from it handfuls of bright flowers, and began to adorn the table of sods upon the top of the mound.

As I regard her thus employed, weaving the tokens of her affection into garlands, chaplets, and fanciful devices, arranging their symbolic characters into interpretable monograms and hieroglyphs, matching their colors and blending their hues and shades with the skill of an artist, she becomes more and more absorbed in her work, the tears disappear from her eyes, and the morning light flushes her pale and beautiful face.  Is she thinking now, I wonder, of the dead husband, or of something else?  What has she found among the flowers so consoling?  Do they suggest pleasant fancies, or recall the memories of happy days?  Have they, perhaps, a double meaning,—­souvenirs of felicity as well as symbols of sorrow?  Are they opiates obliterating actual suffering, or prophets uttering hopeful predictions?  Or is it none of these things, and does she find her work pleasant only because duty makes its performance cheerful labor?  I cannot say what it is, but something has assuaged her grief; for I see her smiling now, as she holds a rosebud in her fingers, and gazes at it abstractedly; and her thoughts and feelings, whatever they may be, are indubitably not of a mournful character;—­in fact, I am sure that she never was happier in her life than she is at this moment.

“Happy, do you say?”