Stories of Romance
with alien eyes;
    A slender cross of wood alone
      Shall say, that here a maiden lies
      In peace beneath the peaceful skies.    And gray old trees of hugest limb
      Shall wheel their circling shadows round
    To make the scorching sunlight dim
      That drinks the greenness from the ground,
      And drop their dead leaves on her mound.    When o’er their boughs the squirrels run,
      And through their leaves the robins call,
    And, ripening in the autumn sun,
      The acorns and the chestnuts fall,
      Doubt not that she will heed them all.    For her the morning choir shall sing
      Its matins from the branches high,
    And every minstrel-voice of spring,
      That trills beneath the April sky,
      Shall greet her with its earliest cry.    When, turning round their dial-track,
      Eastward the lengthening shadows pass,
    Her little mourners, clad in black,
      The crickets, sliding through the grass,
      Shall pipe for her an evening mass.    At last the rootlets of the trees
      Shall find the prison where she lies,
    And bear the buried dust they seize
      In leaves and blossoms to the skies.
      So may the soul that warmed it rise!    If any, born of kindlier blood,
      Should ask, What maiden lies below?
    Say only this: A tender bud,
      That tried to blossom in the snow,
      Lies withered where the violets blow.——I locked the book and sighed as I laid it down. The world is always ready to receive talent with open arms. Very often it does not know what to do with genius. Talent is a docile creature. It bows its head meekly while the world slips... Most of us who have the scientific second-sight school ourselves not to betray our knowledge by word or look.Day by day, as the Little Gentleman comes to the table, it seems to me that the shadow of some approaching change falls darker and darker over his countenance. Nature is struggling with something, and I am afraid she is under in the wrestling-match. You do not care much, perhaps, for my particular conjectures as to the nature of his difficulty. I should say, however, from the sudden flushes to which he is subject, and certain other marks which, as an expert, I know how to interpret, that his heart was in trouble; but then he presses his hand to the right side, as if there were the centre of his uneasiness. When I say difficulty about the heart, I do not mean any of those 
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