It was now the first week in May. Every vestige of winter had long since disappeared, and the verdure of a rich soil and mild temperature was fast enrobing the earth with the freshest and most pleasing of colours. Instead of the dreary expanse of ice that had covered the river, its waters now murmured musically by in the early morn—its curling eddies running along the sedgy shore, while the rising sun slowly dissipated the floating mists; and the inspiring notes of all the wild variety of birds, contributed to invest the scene with such charms as the God of nature only can impart, and which may only be fully enjoyed and justly appreciated by guileless and unsophisticated mortals. Glenn rambled forth, and, partaking the harmony that pervaded the earth, air, and waters, his breast swelled with a blissful exultation that can never be known amid the grating voices of contending men, or experienced in crowded cities, where many confused sounds vibrate harshly and distracting on the ear. He stood in his little garden among the flowers that Mary had planted, and watched the humming-birds poised among the trembling leaves, their tiny wings still unruffled by the dew, while their slender beaks inhaled the sweet moisture of the variegated blossoms. Long he regarded the enchanting scene, unconscious of the flight of time, and alike regardless of the past and the future in his all-absorbing admiration of the present, wherein he deemed he was not far remote from that Presence to which time and eternity are obedient—when his phantasm was abruptly and unceremoniously put to flight by his man Joe, who rushed out of the house with a long rod in his hand; yawning and rubbing his eyes, as if he had been startled from his morning slumber but a moment before. “What’s the matter?” demanded Glenn. “It was a wapper!” said Joe. “What was?” “The fish.” “Where?” asked Glenn. “I’ll tell you. I dreamt I was sitting on a rock, down at the ferry, with this rod in my hand, fishing for perch, when a thundering big catfish, as long as I am, took hold. I dreamt he pulled and I pulled—sometimes he had me in the water up to my knees, and sometimes I got him out on dry land. But he always flounced and kicked back again. Yet he couldn’t escape, because the hook was still in his mouth, and when he jumped into the river I jumped to the rod, and so we had it over and over—” “And now have done with it,” said Glenn, interrupting him. “What are you holding the rod now for?” “I’m going to try to catch him,” said Joe, with unaffected simplicity. “Merely because you had this dream!” continued Glenn, his features relaxing into a smile. “Yes—I believe in dreams,” said Joe. “Once, when we were living in Philadelphia, I had one of these same dreams. It was just about the same hour—” “How do you know what hour it was you dreamt about the fish?” again interrupted Glenn. “Why—I—,” stammered Joe, “I’m sure it was about daybreak, because the sun rose a little while after I got out.”