After that long fever, the very name of which has a sinister sound, I recall the delight I felt when they allowed me to go out into the air, when I was permitted to go down into our beloved yard. The day chosen for my first airing was a radiantly beautiful and clear morning in April. Seated under the bower of jasmine and honeysuckle I felt as if I were experiencing the enchantment of paradise, of another Eden. Everything was budding and blossoming; without my knowledge, during the time that I was confined to my bed, this wonderful drama of the spring had enacted itself upon the earth. I had not often seen this wonderful and magical renewal which has delighted man through all the ages, and to which only the very aged seem indifferent; it ravished me and I allowed my joy to take possession of me almost to the point of intoxication.--Oh! that pure, warm, soft air; the glorious sunlight and the tender, fresh green of the young plants and the budding trees that already cast a little shade. And in myself there was an unwonted strength that bespoke recovery, and I rejoiced mightily when I breathed in the sweet air and felt the flood of new life. My brother was a tall fellow of twenty-one who had the freedom of the house and grounds in which to work out any of his fancies. During my convalescence I entertained myself greatly speculating about something he was busy with in the garden, which something I was dying of impatience to see. At the end of the yard, in a lovely nook under an old plum tree, my brother was making a tiny lake; he had dug it out and cemented it like a cistern, and from the country round about he procured stones and quantities of moss with which to make the banks about the lake romantic looking; he also constructed rocky elevations and grottoes out of stones and mosses. And this work was finished the day that I went out for the first time; they had even put little gold fish into the water, and they turned on the tiny fountain and it played in my honor. I approached it with ecstasy, and I found that it greatly surpassed in beauty anything that my imagination had been able to conjure up. And when my brother told me it was mine, I felt a joy so intense that it seemed to me it must last forever. Oh! what unexpected joy to possess it for my very own! And what happiness to know that I could enjoy it every single day during the warm and beautiful months that were to come. And the thought of being able to live out of doors again, the prospect of playing in every nook of that lovely garden, as I had done the previous summer, was rapture to me.