I have done with Mardi—one is reminded in reading it (after Typee) that “there is as much skill in making dikes as in raising mounts—there is an art of _diving_ as well as flying,” and who knows but what the author, after attaining a comfortable elevation by his former works, may not have made this plunge _on purpose_, as men do who climb to the top of a high mast that they may dive the deeper. * * * * * Now do those crushed, withered budlets of forget-me-not, peeping from under the book covers, remind me of those beautiful hope-flowers that opened their pale blue eyes in the morning of my life, and bloomed and drooped—and passed away— “How fair was then the flower—the tree! How silver-sweet the fountain’s fall! The soulless had a soul to me! My life its own life lent to all! “The universe of things seemed swelling The panting heart to burst its bound, And wandering fancy found a dwelling In every shape, thought, deed and sound. Germed in the mystic buds, reposing, A whole creation slumbered mute; Alas! when from the buds unclosing, How scant and blighted sprung the fruit!” Alas! alas! young life, and young hopes are not perennials; even in the lofty conservatories and crystal hot-houses of wealth and station they flush into a sickly existence, and then perish like the meanest flower by the wayside. Did it ever strike you how much we are alike in this particular? Every one looking back upon his past life as the shipwrecked merchant looks upon the broad sea that hath swallowed up irretrievable treasures. Do you believe that if one had the power of investing his new created babes with a course of life, that he would say, “Do as I have done—pass through my joys and my afflictions, and in the experience of my experience you will be happy!” Do you believe that any one—even the wisest, the purest, the best could say this? By my faith, I do not! And the great focal-glass of a common destiny brings down prismatic, many-hued humanity to a point hue, as a convex lens gathers and concentrates prism-bundles of light and heat from the broad disk of the sun. Human suffering is the chord universal that swells from the vibration of numberless strings. “Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy; This vast and universal theatre Contains more woful pageants than the scene Whereon we play—” But, “Mardi” and forget-me-nots have spoiled three good sheets of foolscap, and I fear that I am too much i’ the sentimental vein; let me therefore conclude with quoting a sweet little piece of philosophy, and lay aside these _lender’s books_ for a period. “A swallow in the spring Came to our granary, and ’neath the eaves Essayed to make a nest, and then did bring Wet earth, and straw, and leaves.