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“Often in my childhood I have mused and asked for what I was born; and my soul answered my heart and said, ‘thou wert born to worship!’ Yes; I know why the real world has ever seemed to me so false and cold.  I know why the world of the stage charmed and dazzled me.  I know why it was so sweet to sit apart and gaze my whole being into the distant heavens.  My nature is not formed for this life, happy though that life seem to others.  It is its very want to have ever before it some image loftier than itself!  Stranger, in what realm above, when the grave is past, shall my soul, hour after hour, worship at the same source as thine?

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“In the gardens of my neighbour there is a small fountain.  I stood by it this morning after sunrise.  How it sprung up, with its eager spray, to the sunbeams!  And then I thought that I should see thee again this day, and so sprung my heart to the new morning which thou bringest me from the skies.

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“I have seen, I have listened to thee again.  How bold I have become!  I ran on with my childlike thoughts and stories, my recollections of the past, as if I had known thee from an infant.  Suddenly the idea of my presumption struck me.  I stopped, and timidly sought thine eyes.

“’Well, and when you found that the nightingale refused to sing?’—­

“‘Ah!’ I said, ‘what to thee this history of the heart of a child?’

“‘Viola,’ didst thou answer, with that voice, so inexpressibly calm and earnest!—­’Viola, the darkness of a child’s heart is often but the shadow of a star.  Speak on!  And thy nightingale, when they caught and caged it, refused to sing?’

“’And I placed the cage yonder, amidst the vine-leaves, and took up my lute, and spoke to it on the strings; for I thought that all music was its native language, and it would understand that I sought to comfort it.’

“‘Yes,’ saidst thou.  ’And at last it answered thee, but not with song,—­in a sharp, brief cry; so mournful, that thy hands let fall the lute, and the tears gushed from thine eyes.  So softly didst thou unbar the cage, and the nightingale flew into yonder thicket; and thou heardst the foliage rustle, and, looking through the moonlight, thine eyes saw that it had found its mate.  It sang to thee then from the boughs a long, loud, joyous jubilee.  And musing, thou didst feel that it was not the vine-leaves or the moonlight that made the bird give melody to night, and that the secret of its music was the presence of a thing beloved.’

“How didst thou know my thoughts in that childlike time better than I knew myself!  How is the humble life of my past years, with its mean events, so mysteriously familiar to thee, bright stranger!  I wonder,—­but I do not again dare to fear thee!

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