The two trunks with their two owners were shown into the best sleeping-room the house afforded, and left with a “dim, religious light” for company. The light showed them (the trunk’s owners, not the trunks) to be men—good-looking and young. Their conversation proved them to be cousins, and on their way to Beverly Park, the home of the handsomer of the two, whom the less handsome addressed as Frank. “But, Ned, speaking of pictures, and furniture,” continued Frank, interrupting himself in his description of Beverly Park and its picture gallery, “you never have seen Clara. Three years ago she bid fair to be a beauty. To-morrow will prove whether time has or has not fulfilled his promise. Three years ago she was a fairy thing of sweet fifteen. I say, Ned, did you ever see a more horrid place than this inn?” “Yes, many.” Frank laughed. “Any way,” said he, “you must acknowledge it is a most dismal apology for a ‘house of entertainment for man and beast:’ I wonder if his godship, Mr. Morpheus, ever deigns to visit it. I feel wonderfully like making the trial. What say you, Ned, shall we court him to wrap us in his mantle of oblivion?” “With all my heart.” The friends resigned themselves to sleep. Blessed be the man who first invented _sleeping_. There is poetry in sleep: there is music in it. Have you never watched the young child, with its fair hair reposing so quietly in clustering curls around its cherub, happy face? Its low, soft-breathing—one little dimpled hand grasping a toy—one fair, rounded arm pillowing its young head. The little rosy mouth in a half smile—smiling to the fairies that come whispering to its heart? This is poetry. Were you never in a stage-coach with an old man for one of its passengers, clad in the greasiest snuff-colored coat and vest imaginable; and bearing upon them any quantity of dull brass buttons—a round-crowned, dirty white beaver upon his red-haired Medusa-like head: he himself fast “locked in the arms of _omnibus_,” and snoring loud enough to awake the seven sleepers? _This_ is music. Morning came. The landlord was duly paid, and the cousins proceeded on their way to Beverly Park. “Three years seems a long time to be away from one’s home, eh! Ned?” said Frank, after they had ridden a long way in silence. “I hope you will like my sister Clara.” “I do not doubt that I shall, if she is any thing like her brother.” “Thank you. These are fine old elms, are they not? I like elm trees; I like them in the moonlight, when the silver-tipped shadows flit among their dark green leaves; they bring to mind old ruined castles. I can fancy ivy-clad turrets, and the soft eyes of fairy maidens gazing from them. Their eyes, as they gleam forth from amid the night-colored boughs, look dreamy and fitful. I see them twine, with snowy, shadowy arms the dark green ivy amid their coal-black tresses. I love elm trees thus bathed in moonlight, they remind me of all the wild things I have ever read, thought or dreamed.”