about the number of elves that dance on the greensward on moonlight nights, or the spangles on their lace wings; or that she is studying the latitude and longitude of the capital of the last territory which Congress elevated to the uncertain and tormenting dignity of nominal self-government, that once (vide ‘obsolete civil hallucinations’) inhered in an American State; or perhaps you believe the child is longing for a pot of sugar candy?  Then rub your eyes, you ecclesiastical bats, and let me show you the ‘outcome’ of all this wise and learned chat, with which you edify one another.  You know she beguiled me into giving her lessons on the organ, as well as the piano, and yesterday when I went over to the church at instruction hour, I was astonished at a prelude, which she had evidently improvised.  Screened from her view, I listened till she finished playing.  Of course I praised her (for really she has remarkable talent), and asked her when she began to compose, to improvise.  Now what do you suppose she answered?  A brigade of Philadelphia lawyers could never guess.  She looked at me very steadily, and said as nearly as I can quote her words:  ’I really don’t know exactly when I began, but I suppose a long time ago, when I wore brown feathers, and went to sleep with my head under my wing, as all nightingales do.’  Said I:  ‘What upon earth do you mean?’ She replied:  ’Why of course I mean when I was a nightingale, before I grew to be a human being.  Didn’t you hear Mr. Hargrove last week reading from that curious book, in which so many queer things were told about transmigration, and how the soul of a musical child came from the nightingale, the sweetest of singers?  And don’t you recollect Mr. Lindsay said that Plato believed it; and that Plotinus taught that people who lead pure lives and yet love music to excess, go into the bodies of melodious birds when they die?  Just now when I played, I was wondering how a nightingale felt, swinging in a plum tree all white with fragrant bloom, and watching the cattle cropping buttercups and dandelions in the field.  Mrs. Lindsay, if my soul is not perfectly fresh and brand new, I hope it never went into a human body before mine, because I would much lather it came straight to me from a sweet innocent bird.”

“Surely, Elise, you are as usual, jesting?” exclaimed her brother.

“On the contrary, I assure you I neither magnify nor embellish.  I am merely stating unvarnished facts, that you may thoroughly understand into what fertile soil your scattered grains of learning fall.  I promise you, with moderate cultivation it will yield an hundred-fold.”

“Mother, what did you say to her, by way of a dose of orthodoxy to antidote the metempsychosis poison?” asked Mr. Lindsay, who could not forbear laughing, at the astonished expression of his uncle’s countenance.