But, how like a feather! How fearfully fragile! She leans on you with all her weight? Then is she scarce heavier than a shadow.— You try cheering words. You tell her how balmy airs always refresh your senses; and timidly ask her if she is not already refreshed herself. The blushing red rose that has ambitiously climbed over the wall, you pluck hastily for her—heedless of either thorns or pain. You offer it to her. She lays it upon her lips. Alas! how fearful the contrast with that blanched face. For the moment, yours is fully as white as her own. You speak of flowers; but your lip quivers. You know that the flower you support on your arm is too white for a rose; too pale by far for a lily; too fragile altogether for an earth-flower: and you cannot keep it out of your mind, that she must soon bloom in another soil. —Oh, God! How the rushing thoughts come now! All your ambition—that strong cord that bound you down to earth—is snapped like tow in a blaze! You could at once burn your books, and feel no regret; if by that means these cruel fears would release your heart from the clutch of their skinny fingers! You would give up your whole life-time, day by day, and year by year—if, by this devotion, you could crush the life out of these cruel spectres! * * * * * Then comes a long day: a dark day: a dismal day. No other such day could ever have been notched in the calendar. The sun is clear—but you do not see it. You are wholly in the darkness. The soft south winds blow upon your temples, and refresh your nostrils with the fragrance they have rifled from gardens full of flowers. —If _she_ could but feel this refreshing fragrance in her nostrils!— You behold many faces—and many strange ones, too. These are wild briars running all over the turf you are slowly treading on; but no roses on one of them; nothing but thorns. Your eye is glassy; and it runs round hurriedly on the ring of faces that are turned to your own. Your muscles are so very rigid—you think your face is of marble. There is a dark throng all around you. Circles of young girls—but not a smile on the face of one of them. Their eyes are cast down; and you fancy their pale lips slightly quiver. You look closer; and your own tremble and shake in spite of you. The dull tramp of feet has ceased. There is no voice—no sound. The silence is unbroken. It hangs over you—over those about you—over the whole dense throng, like a heavy pall. You would even put out your hand and raise it from before your eyes. You feel strange sensations, as of suffocation; and you would fain speak aloud, to satisfy yourself that you still possess your senses. —How heavy!—how oppressive!—how appalling!— By and by, a low, faint, scarce audible sound rises on the air. It is very near you, yet it seems as if it were a very great way off. Now louder—now higher—now nearer still to you. It is as if the air were filled with low wails! It is only a dirge for the dead.