“Oh, bah!” said I to myself; “Sumner told me that cabinet was just fifty dollars.”

Something—­I know not what, and probably never shall know—­made me rise from my rocking-chair, and walk to the chamber-window.  At that moment, a man with a green bag in his hand walked swiftly by, touched his hat as he passed, and smiled as he turned the corner out of sight.  A little spasm, half painful in its pleasure, contracted my chest, and then set out at a thrilling pace to the end of my fingers.  Then a sense of triumphant fulness, in my heart, on my lip, in my eyes.  Not the name, but the nature passed,—­strong to wrestle, determined to win.  Not the body, but the soul of a man, passed across my field of vision, armed for earth-strife, gallantly breasting life.  What mattered the shape or the name,—­whether handsome or with a fine fortune?  How these accidents fell off from the soul, as it beamed in the loving eye and firm lip!

  “The moment that his face I see,
  I know the man that must” lead “me.”

And gently as the fawn follows the forest-keeper does my heart follow his, to the green pastures and still waters where he loves to lead.  I did not think whether he had a name.

“Are you considering what to put into the secret drawer, Del?”

“Yes,—­rather.”

Again Laura and I sat and rocked,—­this time silently, for my head was full, and I was holding a stopper on it to keep it from running over; while Laura was really puzzled about the way to make a dog’s eyes with Berlin wool.  As I rocked, from association probably, I thought again of Eve,—­who never seems at all like a grandmother to me, nor even like “the mother of all living,” but like a sweet, capricious, tender, naughty girl.  Like Eve, I had only to stretch forth my hand (with the fifty-dollar note in it) and grasp “as much beauty as could live” within that space.  Yet, as fifty dollars would buy not only this, but that, and also the other, it presently became the representative of tens of fifties, hundreds of fifties, thousands of fifties, and so on,—­different fifties all, but all assuming shapes of beauty and value; finally, alternately clustering and separating, gathering as if in all sorts of beautiful heads,—­angel heads, winged children,—­then shooting off in a thousand different directions, leaving behind landscapes of exquisite sunsets, of Norwegian scenery, of processions of pines, of moonlight seen through arched bridges, of Palmyrene deserts, of pilgrims in the morning praying.  Then came hurdy-gurdy boys and little flower-girls again, mingling with the landscapes, and thrusting their curly heads forward, as if to bid me not forget them.  Then they all ran away and left me standing in a long, endless hall with endless columns, and white figures all about,—­in the niches, on the floor, on the walls,—­each Olympian in beauty, in grandeur, in power to lift the entranced soul to the high region where itself was created, and to which it always pointed.  The