church-yard, to which I managed to get admittance; and, will you believe it? going to a city church on Sundays. More of this anon. So that, if I was in hell for my sins, it was at least not one of Swedenborg's hells. Never before did I understand what yet I had always considered one of the most exquisite sonnets I knew: "Mourner, that dost deserve thy mournfulness, Call thyself punished, call the earth thy hell; Say, 'God is angry, and I earned it well; 'I would not have him smile and not redress.' Say this, and straightway all thy grief grows less. 'God rules at least, I find, as prophets tell, 'And proves it in this prison.' Straight thy cell Smiles with an unsuspected loveliness. --'A prison--and yet from door and window-bar, 'I catch a thousand breaths of his sweet air; 'Even to me, his days and nights are fair; 'He shows me many a flower, and many a star; 'And though I mourn, and he is very far, 'He does not kill the hope that reaches there.'" "Where did you get that wonderful sonnet?" I cried, hardly interrupting him, for when he came to the end of it, he paused with a solemn pause. "It is one of the stars of the higher heavens which I spied through my prison-bars." "Will you give me a copy of it?" "With all my heart. It has never been in print." "Then your star reminds me of that quaint simile of Henry Vaughan, 'If a star were confined into a tomb, Her captive flames must needs burn there; But when the hand that locked her up gives room, She'll shine through all the sphere.'" "Ah yes; I know the poem. That is about the worst verse in it, though." "Quite true." "What a number of verses you know!" "They stick to me somehow." "Is the sonnet your own?" "My dear fellow, how could I speak in praise of it as I do, if it were my own? I would say 'I wish it were!' only that would be worse selfishness than coveting a man's purse. No. It is not mine." "Well, will you go on with your story--if you will yet oblige me." "I will. But I fear you will think it strange that I should be so communicative to one whose friendship I have so lately gained." "I believe there is a fate in such things," I answered. "Well, I yield to it--if I do not weary you?" "Go on. There is positively not the least danger of that." "Well, it was not to hell I was really sent, but to school--and that not a fashionable boarding, or expensive public school, but a day-school like a Scotch parish school--to learn the conditions and ways and thoughts of my brothers and sisters.