young aspirants. Arabella showed herself an enthusiast for the poetry of L. K. which she said was so after her own heart, that it seemed to her it must have emanated from it; Mr. Reed colored slightly at this remark, and returned an equivocal answer. But the young lady was not to be put off thus, and she asked him directly for his opinion ofthe writer.
"I fear," said he, "I should be a partial judge, as he happens to be a particular friend of mine."
"Indeed," said the young lady, "do tell me what you know of him?" Just then their host joined them, and wished Arabella to be seated at the piano, and to accompany it with her voice. She hesitated, and would have refused, but her New York acquaintance assured them she had not a shadow of excuse, and with a beating heart she complied. As Mr. Reed handed her to the piano, she whispered "you shall now hear one of your friend's songs." Thus was it for the first time that he exulted in his own productions, as he heard from the sweetest voice in the world some of his juvenile rhymes. When she had finished, he again offered his arm, and whispered that he "now thought his friend a poet."
"Do you leave town soon?" enquired he, as loitering behind the rest of the company; he waited upon her to the supper-room.
"Tomorrow, I suppose," returned she.
"Tomorrow," echoed he, imprinting a kiss upon her delicate hand, and adding as if abstractedly, "that thou could'st know, fair being."
"Surely I have been dreaming," thought she, as she returned to her parents—" that deep soul could never descend to love any earthly being-a stranger especially. I deceive myself—but no, that glance, those words but half audibly uttered." But the morrow came, and Arabella and her parents left for home.
Time passed on, and each succeeding month hallowed but more deeply the image of the transient acquaintance, whom Arabella in all probability should never again behold.
Letters came from Frank as usual, though there seemed something a little mystic about them, as though his mind was "ill at ease." This rather alarmed the parents, and feeling that his health was suffering from a too close application, they wrote proposing for him to come and spend the summer with them. This proposal he gladly accepted, but was much disappointed on coming home to find his sister absent on a visit; for he had hoped that in her presence he should forget the image that interferred so boldly with his progress. The time, however, soon came when the sister returned, and was met by one ofthe domestics at the door with the news of her brother's arrival. She was soon in her father's arms, expressing her joy at the near prospect of seeing her long absent brother, when her mother entered from the garden, followed by Frank.
"Arabella," said the father, "your brother Francis." Frank receded a few steps in amazement, and Arabella, equally bewildered, leaned back upon the sofa without making any response. The parents left the room, and with a death-like paleness Frank gave a brother's kiss to the cheek that heeded it not. But as she at length gave him a conscious look, he whispered,
"Truth is stranger than fiction, is it not, my sister? But let us forget the romantic past (if indeed reality is here) and be happy in our discovered relation My heart has once given out its full music for you, and never again can woman touch a similar chord."
"Dear, dear brother," said the girl, "the thought of you hath given me nobler being."
"Now play to me one of my friend's songs," said the brother, "and I will one day introduce you to him."
"Dear Francis," said Arabella, as one delightful afternoon of that happy summer they had wandered to the woods to enjoy the beauty of its pencilled leaves and murmuring waters, "dear Francis, there was a feeling about our interview at ——, that might have made me more than suspect I had known you before; but to speak the truth, I referred it to some strange reminiscence of an earlier being. I suppose you will think me visionary—father says I have a good deal of the German mysticism about me."
"O call not the idea of a pre-existence mere mysticism," interrupted the brother, "unless indeed you would class all the higher truths of intellect under some such head. The poet speaks my inherent conviction, that
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's a star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar."
"You always agree with me," replied Arabella, "and thus make my treasured thoughts doubly dear to me. And you will pardon me if I am a little metaphysical this afternoon—plodding, mother would call it. Do you think, Francis, we are free beings—that we are an impulse to ourselves?"
"That is a subject which has baffled too many sages to cloud thy lovely brow. The poet (earth's best philosopher) tells us that the freedom of the universe consists in that active principle which 'from link to link doth circulate the soul of all the worlds.' "
"O, Francis, I sometimes wish I could strip the veil from things, and know something of the 'great first cause least understood.""
"I have often thought," replied her brother, "if there was a fault in your character, it was that restless and unnatural—at least uncommon propensity to press your enquiries upon the unknown and the unfathomable. Be assured, dearest Arabella, that
