A sort of beauteous anger spread Over her face. ‘O me!’ she said, ‘That you should sit and trifle so, And you so utterly don’t know How greatly you have yet to grow, How wide your objects have to expand, How much is yet an unknown land! You’re twenty-three, I’m twenty-five, And I am so much more alive.’ My eyes I shaded with my hand, And almost lost my self-command. I muttered something: ‘Yes, I see; Two years have severed you from me. O, Emily, was it ever told,’ I asked, ‘that souls are young and old?’ But she, continuing, ‘All the day Were I to speak, I could but say The one same thing the one same way. Sometimes, indeed, I think, you know,’ And her tone suddenly was low, ‘That in a day we yet shall see, You of my sisters and of me, And of the things that used to be, Will think, as you look back again, With something not unlike disdain; So you your rightful place obtain, That will to me be joy, not pain.’ Her voice still lower, lower fell, I heard, just heard, each syllable. ‘But,’ in the tone she used before, ‘Don’t stay at college any more! For others it perhaps may do, I’m sure it will be bad for you.’ She softened me. The following day We parted. As I went away Her infant on her bosom lay, And, as a mother might her boy, I think she would with loving joy Have kissed me; but I turned to go, ’Twas better not to have it so. Next year achieved me some amends, And once we met, and met as friends. Friends, yet apart; I had not much Valued her judgment, though to touch Her words had power; yet, strangely still, It had been cogent on my will. As she had counselled, I had done, And a new effort was begun. Forth to the war of life I went, Courageous, and not ill content. ‘Yours is the fault I opened thus again A youthful, ancient, sentimental vein,’ He said, ‘and like Munchausen’s horn o’erflow With liquefying tunes of long ago. My wiser friend, who knows for what we live, And what shall seek, will his correction give.’ We all made thanks. ‘My tale were quickly told,’ The other said, ‘but the turned heavens behold; The night two watches of the night is old, The sinking stars their suasions urge for sleep. My story for to-morrow night will keep.’ The evening after, when the day was stilled, His promise thus the clergyman fulfilled. _THE CLERGYMAN’S FIRST TALE._ _Love is fellow-service._