After having travelled some hours in our own diligence (i.e., driven through the air by our own will), moving along quite leisurely that we might survey the country beneath us, we reached a group of beautiful lakes, reminding me strongly in size and appearance of lakes Erie, Huron, Michigan, and Superior, the famed lakes of my own native clime.

In the centre of the largest of these lakes lay the island we were seeking.  We descended like skilful aeronauts into the centre of a group of happy children, who were playing like little fairies amid the flowers blooming profusely everywhere.

Singling out two of the prettiest, we addressed them.

Directly a merry band gathered about us, answering our questions intelligently and skipping before us to lead the way to the “Golden Nest,” as the superb structure was called in which these little soul-birds were sheltered.

Everywhere, as we advanced, our eyes lit upon pretty bands of children; some swinging in the tree-boughs like birds, some waltzing in the air, others sitting upon the green, chattering and singing, filling the surrounding air with their melody.

Certainly it was a most enlivening sight to witness their enjoyment.  After having amused ourselves for a while with their gambols, we turned our steps toward the Home.

The building was oval in form, and composed of a golden fleecy incrustation from which it derived it, name.  Within, the “Nest” was like Aladdin’s palace.

Innumerable compartments, hung with silks and tissues of tender and. harmonious colors, and decorated with birds’ plumage of varied hues, arrested the eye.  These spacious alcoves were each furnished with a domed skylight, adorned with hanging tassels and glittering ornaments.  Ladies were busy in nearly all of these compartments in instructing children under their care.

In some that I entered I was shown new-born babes not an hour old, torn from their mothers’ bosoms on earth, and lying upon fleecy pillows, attended by lovely women, who looked the angels which they were.

One of these gay baby-nests in which I lingered was decorated with peculiar tastefulness, and seemed like a perfect aviary.  Singular birds of splendid plumage were perched on various projections about the spacious apartment, warbling away like silver bells.

The lady of this chamber was engaged in teaching a little girl of some two summers to mount to the skylight by her will.

This lady, I was informed, was the noble lady R——­, so famed for her charity on earth.

She was very gracious and communicative, and told me that some children exercised their ability to rise in air more readily than others; that the difficulties their instructor had to guard against were the fickle, versatile nature of their wills, and their inability for continuous thought.  Their wayward minds could not be directed long at one point.  They would wander from the path like the poor little Babes in the Wood, and on their way to special destinations, would change their thoughts, unharness their will, and come suddenly down, sometimes in lonely and unfrequented spots.