How I longed for a blushing maiden to tune her harp, or chant her song, just then! Though I am the son of a fisherman, I confess I thought I heard one tripping lightly behind me, her face all warm with smiles. It was but a fancy, and I sighed while asking myself what had induced it. Not a brook murmured; no willows distilled their night dews; birds did not make the air melodious with their songs; and there were no magnolia trees to shake from their locks those showers of liquid pearls which so bedew the books of our lady novelists. True, the sea became as a mirror, reflecting argosies of magic sails, and the star-lights tripped, and danced, and waltzed over the gently undulating swells. A moment more and I heard the tide rips sing, and the ground swell murmur, as it had done in my childhood, when I had listened and wondered what it meant. The sea gull, too, was nestling upon the bald sands, where he had sought rest for the night, and there echoed along through the air so sweetly, the music of a fisherman's song; and the mimic surf danced and gamboled along the beach, spreading it with a chain of phosphorous light, over which the lanterns mounted on two stately towers close by threw a great glare of light: and this completed the picture. While contemplating the beauties before me, I was suddenly seized with a longing for fame. It was true I had little merit of my own, but as it had become fashionable at this day for men without merit to become famous, the chance for me, I thought, was favorable indeed. I contemplated my journey in quest of fame, and resolved never to falter. "Fame," I mused, "what quality of metal art thou made of, that millions bow down and worship thee?" And all nature, through her beauties, seemed returning an answer, and I arose from my reverie, and wended my way toward the cabin of my aged parents. A bright light streamed from one of the windows, serving as my beacon. I had not gone far before Fame, I thought, replied for herself, and said: "Know, son of a fisherman, that I am a capricious goddess; at least, I am so called by the critics. And they, being adepts in deep knowledge, render verdicts the world must not dispute. I have the world for my court: my shrine is everywhere, and millions worship at it. Genius, learning, and valor, are my handmaids. I have great and good men for my vassals; and upon them it affords me comfort to bestow my gifts. I seek out the wise and the virtuous, and place garlands of immortality upon their heads; I toy with my victims, and then hurl them into merited obscurity. Little men most beset me, most hang about my garments, and sigh most for my smiles. The rich man would have me build monuments to his memory; the ambitious poor man repines when I forget him. Novel-writing damsels, their eyes bedimmed with bodkin shaped tears, and their fingers steeled with envious pens it seems their love to dip in gall, cast longing looks at me. Peter Parley, and other poets, have laid their offerings low