—I had thrown myself into my arm-chair one day—it was in the latter part of a protracted and severe winter—and was gradually losing myself in the sweet and soothing play of feelings that always hover about me here. The wintry winds had bawled themselves hoarse over the snowy fields in the distance, and were charging in thick squadrons down the wooded road, to attack the first chance traveler. I could hear them piping shrilly at the crannies and beneath the eaves; and their whistling voices had, I confess, a secret charm for me. I knew they could not reach me with their frost-biting breath; and I unconsciously drew a bit nearer the fire, and wrapped myself more closely in the feeling of comfort that I had drawn about me. It was already past mid-afternoon; and the pale and lifeless sun threw itself across my floor more like a veritable shadow, than like the cheerful sun it should have been. I tried to lose myself entirely—to sleep; but that was only impossible. My thoughts would not wholly sleep. Yet they were, for all that, disposed to drowsiness. Every thing I had ever heard, or read, seemed crowding back on my memory. Chance sayings from lips that had not spoken in long years; and quaint lines from quaintest authors. Old books sifted out their piquancies into my lap, that I should pick them up and examine them over again, one at a time. My mind was, for the moment, converted into a crowded museum. Every thing was huddled together there; yet not so confusedly as that I could not lay my hand—so to say—on whatever I wanted. By some unknown association, the line of Banquo, in his questioning of Macbeth respecting the three witches, came to me; and I know not if I repeated it aloud to myself or not, in the state of reverie into which my mind was lapsing: “The earth has bubbles, as the water hath.” At all events, the line kept running and spinning round in my brain—I all the while trying to deduce some hidden meaning from it. I had it over and over again; and in time, my thoughts began to weave themselves together somewhat after this wise:— * * * * * —Bubbles? Yes—and a plenty of them, too! The baby blows them from the smooth bowl of a clay pipe; distending its little cheeks to their utmost, and staring at the gaudy tints that sail over their surfaces, with a delight that is almost uncontrollable. The youth blows them, when he looks out from one of the windows of his lofty air-castle; and his eye swims with the pleasant prospect he sees through the golden mist that hangs before him. The man of mature years blows them—big and round; but they are not always so gayly painted as those he inflated years ago. The colors are faded: they seem soiled: they are, in truth, wanting. Yet the bubbles are no less bubbles, albeit they look so vapory and dull.