It was the last night of the year, and the bell upon the church near by had made many strokes the last time it had been heard; many heavy strokes which throbbed sullenly, mournfully on the air. The presence of passing Time was at hand. The year soon would join the years gone by. Regret, remorse, despair, abandonment, the hopelessness of humanity--was it the breath of these which arose and burdened heavily the note of the chronicling bell? Where were the chimes of joy? "These shadows that you see are not upon the wall," said the Singing Mouse. "They are very much beyond the windows. If only we will look out from our windows, there are always great pictures waiting for us--pictures in pearl and opal, in liquid argent, in crimson and gold. But always there must be the shadows. Without these, there can be no picture anywhere. "Have you not seen what the shadows do? Have you not seen them trooping through the oak forest in the evening, through the pine forest in open day, across the prairies under the moon at night, legions of them, armies of them? Have you never seen them march across the grass-lands in the daytime, cohort after cohort, hurrying to the call of the unseen trumpets? In the woods, have you never heard strange sounds, when you put your ear to the ground--sounds untraceable to any animate life? Have you never heard vague voices in the trees? Have you not heard distant, mysterious noises in the forest, whose cause you could never learn, seek no matter how you might? These were the voices of the shadows, the people who live there. Who else should it be to whisper and sing to you and make you happy when you are there? Without these people, what would be the woods, the prairies, the waters, the sky, the world? "Without the shadows, too, what would be our lives? Thoughts, thoughts and remembrances, what have we that is sweeter than these? Have you never seen the smile upon the lips of those who have died? They say they are looking upon the Future. Perhaps they look also upon the Past, and therefore smile in happiness, seeing again Youth, and Hope, and Faith, and Trust; which are tender and beautiful things. Life has no actuality of its own, and in material sense is only a continual change. But the shadows of thought and of remembrance do not change. It is only the shadows that are real." As I pondered upon this, there passed by many pleasant pictures upon the wall, after the way the Singing Mouse had; many pictures of days gone by, which made me think that perhaps what the Singing Mouse had said was true.