It was a sunny day, and I left for a few moments the circumscribed spot which is my appointed place of labor, that I might look from an adjoining window upon the bright loveliness of nature. Yes, it was a sunny day; but for many days before, the sky had been veiled in gloomy clouds; and joyous indeed was it to look up into that blue vault, and see it unobscured by its sombre screen; and my heart fluttered, like a prisoned bird, with its painful longings for an unchecked flight amidst the beautiful creation around me. Why is it, said a friend to me one day, that the factory girls write so much about the beauties of nature? Oh! why is it, (thought I, when the query afterwards recurred to me,) why is it that visions of thrilling loveliness so often bless the sightless orbs of those whose eyes have once been blessed with the power of vision? Why is it that the delirious dreams of the famine-stricken, are of tables loaded with the richest viands, or groves, whose pendent boughs droop with their delicious burdens of luscious fruit? Why is it that haunting tones of sweetest melody come to us in the deep stillness of midnight, when the thousand tongues of man and nature are for a season mute? Why is it that the desert-traveller looks forward upon the burning boundless waste, and sees pictured before his aching eyes, some verdant oasis, with its murmuring streams, its gushing founts, and shadowy groves--but as he presses on with faltering step, the bright _mirage_ recedes, until he lies down to die of weariness upon the scorching sands, with that isle of loveliness before him? Oh tell me why is this, and I will tell why the factory girl sits in the hour of meditation, and thinks--not of the crowded clattering mill, nor of the noisy tenement which is her home, nor of the thronged and busy street which she may sometimes tread,--but of the still and lovely scenes which, in bygone hours, have sent their pure and elevating influence with a thrilling sweep across the strings of the spirit-harp, and then awaken its sweetest, loftiest notes; and ever as she sits in silence and seclusion, endeavoring to draw from that many-toned instrument a strain which may be meet for another's ear, that music comes to the eager listener like the sound with which the sea-shell echoes the roar of what was once its watery home. All her best and holiest thoughts are linked with those bright pictures which call them forth, and when she would embody them for the instruction of others, she does it by a delineation of those scenes which have quickened and purified her own mind.