A door wide open, but where did it lead? I saw no sweetness in her, nothing but excitement. She had learned grammar, but no language; her soul was undernourished. A true woman would have married; she would have been a man's wife, she would have been a mother, she would have been a benediction to herself. Why pounce on a pleasure merely to prevent others from having it? And she so tall and handsome! The dog stands growling over a bone. He waits till another dog approaches. Then suddenly he is overcome with gluttony, pounces on the bone and crushes it between his teeth. Because the other dog is approaching. It seemed as though this small event had to happen before my mind was ready for the night. I awoke in the dark and felt within me the nursery rhyme I had dawdled over so long: four rollicking verses about the juniper tree. To the top of the steepest mountains, where the little juniper stands, no other tree can follow from all the forest lands. Halfway to the hilltop the shivering pine catches hold; the birch has actually passed him, though sneezing with a cold. But a little shrub outstrips them, a sturdy fellow he, and stands quite close to the summit, though he measures barely a yard. They look like a train from the valley below with the shortest one for the guard. Or else perhaps he's a coachman now-- why, it's only a juniper tree. Down dale there's summer lightning, green leaves and St. John's feast, with songs and games of children, and a dozen dances at least. But high on the empty mountain stands a shrub in lonely glory, with only the trolls that prowl about, just like in a story. The wind with the juniper's forelock is making very free; it sweeps across the world beneath that lies there helpless and bare, but the air on the heights is fresher than you'll ever find it elsewhere. None can see so far around as such a juniper tree. There hovers over the mountain for a moment summer's breath; at once eternal winter brings back his companion, death. Yet sturdy stands the juniper with needles ever green. I wonder how the little chap can bear a life so lean. He's hard as bone and gristle, as anyone can see; when every other tree is stripped, his berries are scarlet and sleek, and every berry's plainly marked with a cross upon its cheek. So now we know what he looks like too, this jolly juniper tree. At times I think he sings to himself a cheerful little song: "I've got a bright blue heaven to look at all day long!" Sometimes to his juniper brothers he calls that they need not fear the trolls that are prowling and peering about them far and near. Gently the winter evening falls over the copse on the height, and a thousand stars and candles are lit in the plains of the sky. The juniper trees grow weary and nod their heads on the sly; before we know it they're fast asleep, so we say: "Good night, good night!"