3. _Here John slyly deposited back upon the plate a bunch of grapes which, not unobserved by Alice, he had meditated dividing with her; and both seemed willing to relinquish them for the present as irrelevant._ While the father has been telling of his glorious childhood among the rich fruit on the great estate, John has quietly picked up a bunch of grapes, and his quick-witted father, seeing the act, sneers a little at _such-like common baits of children_. John, wishing to be manly, puts the grapes back without a word, though evidently he will be glad enough to return to them at the proper time. Not a selfish child at all was John, for he meditated dividing the grapes with Alice, and they would have been so sweet and cooling while the children stood there listening to the story. 4. _Here the children fell a-crying and asked if their little mourning which they had on was not for Uncle John, and they looked up and prayed me not to go on about their uncle, but to tell them some stories about their pretty dead mother._ How tender-hearted they both are, and yet until now they had hardly realized that it was for Uncle John that they were wearing their fresh mourning. This was a new grief too sad to them, but it turned their gentle sympathies to their pretty dead mother, of whom they were always glad to hear. The father has scarcely begun to speak when he sees in Alice so much resemblance to his dead wife that he almost thinks it is the mother who stands beside him. So violent is his emotion that he gradually comes out of his reverie, and as he does so the children fade away and recede into the distance, saying, "_We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams._" Is it not a wonderful thing that with so few words a writer can put his heart so much into yours that you believe almost as much as he does in the reality of the vision?