Will dreams satisfy, reach high as they can? Are we not, after all, poor groveling mortals, tied to earth, and to each other; are there not sympathies, and hopes, and affections which can only find their issue and blessing in fellow absorption? Does not the heart, steady and pure, as it may be, and mounting on soul flights often as it dare, want a human sympathy, perfectly indulged, to make it healthful? Is there not a fount of love for this world as there is a fount of love for the other? Is there not a certain store of tenderness cooped in this heart, which must, and _will_ be lavished, before the end comes? Does it not plead with the judgment, and make issue with prudence, year after year? Does it not dog your steps all through your social pilgrimage, setting up its claims in forms fresh and odorous as new-blown heath bells, saying—come away from the heartless, the factitious, the vain, and measure your heart not by its constraints, but by its fullness, and by its depth! Let it run, and be joyous! Is there no demon that comes to your harsh night-dreams, like a taunting fiend, whispering—be satisfied; keep your heart from running over; bridle those affections; there is nothing worth loving? Does not some sweet being hover over your spirit of reverie like a beckoning angel, crowned with halo, saying—hope on, hope ever; the heart and I are kindred; our mission will be fulfilled; nature shall accomplish its purpose; the soul shall have its paradise? —I threw myself upon my bed: and as my thoughts ran over the definite, sharp business of the morrow, my reverie, and its glowing images, that made my heart bound, swept away like those fleecy rain clouds of August, on which the sun paints rainbows-—driving southward, by the cool, rising wind from the north. —I wonder—thought I, as I dropped asleep—if a married man with his sentiment made actual is, after all, as happy as we poor fellows, in our dreams? [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] OVER HIS CIGAR I DO not believe that there was ever an Aunt Tabithy who could abide cigars. My Aunt Tabithy hated them with a peculiar hatred. She was not only insensible to the rich flavor of a fresh rolling volume of smoke, but she could not so much as tolerate the sight of the rich russet color of an Havana-labeled box. It put her out of all conceit with Guava jelly, to find it advertised in the same tongue, and with the same Cuban coarseness of design. She could see no good in a cigar. “But by your leave, my aunt,” said I to her the other morning—“there is very much that is good in a cigar.”