How we came to talk of many things, I cannot remember; but we somehow found ourselves speaking of matters of near and deep experience without consciousness of singularity.  We admitted those puzzling life-questions that present themselves, on a still summer evening, when we long to escape from the conditions of finite being, and yet contemplate the necessity of working at our tasks shackled by a thousand iron circumstances.

“My plan of life, so far as I have any, seems to point to education,” said my companion.  “I am thrown in great measure upon my own activity for support, and have an aunt who is very zealous in the work, and who has often asked me to become her fellow-laborer.  Until now I could never well leave home; but she has written to me again since”—­she stopped, as if distressed, and with a woman’s tact glanced at her mourning-dress to tell me the story;—­“she has written to me earnestly of late upon the subject.  I feel how noble an object it is to live for, and I want an object, Heaven knows; but there are reasons—­perhaps I should say feelings, not reasons—­why I hesitate.  I am asked to bind myself for ten years to the work in a Western college.  There are many advantages in a permanent position, both for the teacher and the institution, but”—­

Her voice faltered; and I felt that Nature had at times made other suggestions to that fresh young spirit, other possibilities had dawned through the future; perhaps they were certainties,—­and the thought passed me with a shudder.

“Teaching is a terrible drudgery,” I said; “the labor and devotion of the true teacher are yet unrecognized by the world.”

“I am not afraid of the vexations,” she replied:  “I am very fond of being with young people; yet I have been taught to think it was happier, if our affections could be somewhat more concentrated than—­In short, I had better finish an awkward sentence, by saying that I do not feel quite ready to pledge myself to give up all possibilities connected with my New-England home.”

It was spoken with such sweet ingenuousness that I was only charmed.  The simple sincerity of the confession seemed to me much better than the flippant jest and pert talk with which I had heard such subjects treated while making my observations upon what my city-acquaintances had assured me was good society.  Is it not Sterling who exclaims that a luxurious and polished life without a true sense of the beautiful and the great is more barren and sad to see than that of the ignorant and the brutalized?  And if this be true, how shall we imagine a greater satisfaction than to find the fresh truth of Nature set in a polished and graceful form?  For since it is through form that we take cognizance of all we love and all we believe, it is well that the sign and idea should merge, and come complete and whole to govern us aright.

I should have no objection to meditating after this manner for a page or two, as well as further hinting what important nothings sparkled upon Doctor Dastick’s piazza that pleasant summer night.  But as I must curtail this biographical fragment in some part or other, it seems best to do it about that portion where I may trust that the experience of every reader will supply the deficiency.