“I dare say many of the things I am telling were at the time very indistinct and confused; but if I should tell them in the same way, they would not have form enough for you to see them. Then I cannot remember the voyage in course,--day after day,--but particular times I remember just as distinctly as if they had happened yesterday. If I should confuse a little what I felt then with what I have felt since, it would be perfectly natural; for I do feel sometimes as if I had never left that ship. I wonder if we never have but one thought all our lives? That ship was then the whole world to me, and now the whole world seems the ship. And that carries me back to one splendid night,--the only perfectly beautiful night in the voyage,--in fact it is the only night I remember; I suppose the nurse usually kept me below for fear of the night air. That night there was a great deal of noise and talking in the cabin, and I stole away to the deck. All was stillness and starlight, with a gentle sound in the sails like the cooing of a dove, and every thing as if it had been going on so for hours. A few long swells reached to the horizon, and I could see their waving lines against the sky, and the light came up from beyond them, so that the whole world seemed to be ocean, and the ship the only living thing, swaying on its bosom as lightly as Anna's cross, (what a beauty it is, Anna!) and the top of the masts sweeping over whole tracts of stars, and the stars blinking as if keeping time with the dipping of the vessel, till it all seemed a dance, ship and stars together, the stars seeming ships in an ocean of space, and the ship to hang in a liquid sky, and I,--there I was alone on the deck, my world under my feet; and who knew but that in each of the stars was a being whose steed bounded beneath him as intelligently as mine? Would not these sometimes speak each other, as the passing ships? Perhaps they do now, I thought, in a way as much finer as the ocean on which they all sail is larger than ours; and by listening attentively perhaps my ear will become fine enough to hear them. Now, what are you laughing at Kate?” “Only to think how Humboldt would look, to hear you describing the world which you had conquered so scientifically.” “Just as if I felt so now, and did not know that only a little child as I then was would ever have such magnificent ideas of itself. I don't believe even then I looked any wiser than you, when you came to school with your new Geology, walking as grand as if you were treading on the old red sandstone.” “Now don't, Fanny! We all feel proud enough of our new studies; it seems like having attained the greater part of a science to have bought the books; but we feel humble enough to make up for it on examination day.” “But all the time you have not said a word about the shipwreck,” suggested Effie. “O, yes, the shipwreck!” exclaimed the girls.