grief.  This weak remembrance is strangely contrasted with the opposing one in dreams and fevers in this respect, that in the two last it is always the cruel sorrows of childhood which return; the dream this mock-sun of childhood—­and the fever, its distorting glass—­both draw forth from dark corners the fears of defenceless childhood, which press and cut with iron fangs into the prostrate soul.  The fair scenes of dreams mostly play on an after-stage, whereas the frightful ones choose for theirs the cradle and the nursery.  Moreover, in fever, the ice-hands of the fear of ghosts, the striking one of the teachers and parents, and every claw with which fate has pressed the young heart, stretch themselves out to catch the wandering man.  Parents, consider then, that every childhood’s Rupert—­the name given in Germany to the fictitious being employed to frighten children into obedience—­even though it has lain chained for tens of years, yet breaks loose and gains mastery over the man so soon as it finds him on a sick-bed.  The first fright is more dangerous the sooner it happens:  as the man grows older, he is less and less easily frightened; the little cradle or bed-canopy of the child is more easily quite darkened than the starry heaven of the man.—­Jean Paul Richter.

A REJECTED LOVER.

      You ‘never loved me,’ Ada!—­Those slow words
      Dropped softly from your gentle woman’s tongue,
      Out of your true and tender woman’s heart,
      Dropped—­piercing into mine like very swords,
      The sharper for their brightness!  Yet no wrong
      Lies to your charge; nor cruelty, nor art;
    Even while you spoke, I saw the ready tear-drop start.

      You ’never loved me?’—­No, you never knew—­
      You, with youth’s dews yet glittering on your soul—­
      What ’tis to love.  Slow, drop by drop, to pour
      Our life’s whole essence, perfumed through and through
      With all the best we have, or can control,
      For the libation; cast it down before
    Your feet—­then lift the goblet, dry for evermore!

      I shall not die, as foolish lovers do: 
      A man’s heart beats beneath this breast of mine;
      The breast where—­Curse on that fiend’s whispering,
      ’It might have been!’—­Ada, I will be true
      Unto myself—­the self that worshipped thine. 
      May all life’s pain, like those few tears that spring
    For me—­glance off as rain-drops from my white dove’s wing!

      May you live long, some good man’s bosom-flower,
      And gather children round your matron knees! 
      Then, when all this is past, and you and I
      Remember each our youth but as an hour
      Of joy—­or torture; one, serene, at ease,
      May meet the other’s grave yet steadfast eye,
    Thinking, ’He loved me well!’—­clasp hands, and so pass by.