Scene, steamboat.—­About to leave Buffalo—­Baggage coming on board—­Passengers bustling for their berths—­Little boys persecuting everybody with their newspapers and pamphlets—­J., S. and M. huddled up in a forlorn corner, behind a large trunk—­A heavy rain falling.

M.  Water, water everywhere.  After Niagara one would like a dry strip of existence.  And at any rate it is quite enough for me to have it under foot without having it over head in this way.

J.  Ah, do not abuse the gentle element.  It is hardly possible to have too much of it, and indeed, if I were obliged to choose amid the four, it would be the one in which I could bear confinement best.

S.  You would make a pretty Undine, to be sure!

J.  Nay, I only offered myself as a Triton, a boisterous Triton of the sounding shell ...  You; M. I suppose, would be a salamander, rather.

M.  No! that is too equivocal a position, whether in modern mythology, or Hoffman’s tales.  I should choose to be a gnome.

J.  That choice savors of the pride that apes humility.

M.  By no means; the gnomes are the most important of all the elemental tribes.  Is it not they who make the money?

J.  And are accordingly a dark, mean, scoffing,—­

M.  You talk as if you had always lived in that wild unprofitable element you are so fond of, where all things glitter, and nothing is gold; all show and no substance.  My people work in the secret, and their works praise them in the open light; they remain in the dark because only there such marvels could be bred.  You call them mean.  They do not spend their energies on their own growth, or their own play, but to feed the veins of mother earth with permanent splendors, very different from what she shows on the surface.

Think of passing a life, not merely in heaping together, but making gold.  Of all dreams, that of the alchymist is the most poetical, for he looked at the finest symbol.  Gold, says one of our friends, is the hidden light of the earth, it crowns the mineral, as wine the vegetable order, being the last expression of vital energy.

J.  Have you paid for your passage?

M.  Yes! and in gold, not in shells or pebbles.

J.  No really wise gnome would scoff at the water, the beautiful water.  “The spirit of man is like the water.”

S.  Yes, and like the air and fire, no less.

J.  Yes, but not like the earth, this low-minded creature’s chosen dwelling.

M.  The earth is spirit made fruitful,—­life.  And its heart-beats are told in gold and wine.

J.  Oh! it is shocking to hear such sentiments in these times.  I thought that Bacchic energy of yours was long since repressed.

M.  No!  I have only learned to mix water with my wine, and stamp upon my gold the heads of kings, or the hieroglyphics of worship.  But since I have learnt to mix with water, let’s hear what you have to say in praise of your favorite.