Gay parties, young ladies with lovers, happy mammas with their children, fathers with their clinging daughters, pass me,—­and I, motionless, follow them with my eyes down the avenue, until they emerge into the sunlight about the spring.  Many of them give me a kindly greeting; some stop to stare.  The look of pity which saddens nearly every face that approaches me cuts me to the heart.  Can I never give joy, or excite pleasurable emotion?  Must I always be a mute and unwilling petitioner for sympathy in suffering!—­always giving pain? never anything but pain and pity?

Sunday.

There is a summer-house near the spring, and now I lie there, watching the water-drinkers.  Like rain upon the just and unjust, the waters benefit all,—­but surely most those simple souls who take them with eager hope and bless them with thankful hearts.  The first who arrive are from the hotel, mostly silken sufferers.  They stand, glass in hand, chatting and laughing,—­they stoop to dip,—­and then they drink.  These persons soon return to the house in groups,—­some gayly exchanging merry words or kindly greetings, but others dragging weary limbs and discontented spirits back to loneliness.

The fashionable hour is over, and now comes another class of health-seekers.  A rough, white-covered wagon jolts up.  The horse is tied to a post, a curtain unbuttoned and raised, and from a bed upon the uneasy floor a pale, delicate boy, shrinking from the light, is lifted by his burly father.  The child is carried to the spring, and puts out a groping hand when his father bids him drink.  He cannot find the glass, and his father must put it to his lips.  He is blind, except to light,—­and that only visits those poor sightless eyes to agonize them!  Where the water flows off below the basin in a clear jet, the father bathes his boy’s forehead, and gently, gently touches his eyelids.  But the child reaches out his wasted hands, and dashes the water against his face with a sad eagerness.

Other country vehicles approach.  The people are stopping to drink of this water, on their way to drink of the waters of life in church.  They are smart and smiling in their Sunday clothes.  I observe, that, far from being the old or diseased, they are mostly young men and pretty girls.  The marble spring is a charming trysting-place!

There are swarms of children here all day long.  This is the first time since I left Kate’s apron-string at seven years old, that I have seen much of children.  Boys, to be sure, I was with until I left college; but the hotel-life I afterwards led kept me quite out of the way of youngsters.  Now, I am much amused at the funny little world that opens before my notice.  They flirt like grown-up people!  I heard a little chit of six say to a youth of five,—­

“How dare you ask me to go to the spring with you, when you’ve been and asked Ellen already? I don’t have to put up with half a gentleman!”