102
OUR PICNIC BY THE SEA.
the brilliancy and versatility of other men, yet all feeling was naught compared to the delight I felt at this new acquaintance. In him I found united all the graces I had so ardently sought; and which proved the fallacy of my young friends prophesies, when they declared my hero was only to be found in Utopia. He came, he saw, he conquered ! Without any reserve I was won.
The happy, happy day when we first met was one long to be remembered for its beauty; for the sun rose without a cloud to veil his face, and cast such earnest, ardent glances on both hill and hollow as to dimple everything in nature with a smile; then the brook caught the infection, and told of love to all the nodding, blue-eyed gentians on its banks; and not content with that, wild rover as he was, kissed and murmured words of tenderness to all the little snowy pebbles at its feet, which stopped its course to receive the sweet attention. Then the daisies on the hillside, with their hearts of gold, which all night had drank intoxicating draughts of dew, were reeling and nodding on the hillside in a most disgraceful plight. In vain the wind would try to lift them up, that the sun might not perceive how madly they had reveled all the night before; they would be foolish and obstreperous still, kissing and hugging in a way quite shocking to their little Quaker neighbor, the blonde-faced clover. Butter- cups were there, in which the sunshine slept when, weary of his tasks in painting fruit and flower. Even the priests and priestesses of the woodlands forgot, for a time, their vigor, and dropped their emerald hoods and cowls, as if they stood in the presence of some living saint. Oh ! how wildly intoxicating were the emotions which this glorious harmony wafted to my soul. In an ecstasy of delight I nodded the pleasure this introduction afforded me, and without a thought of danger quaffed deeply of the exhilarating beverage. Dark eyes looked fondly into mine ; a warm, shapely hand imprisoned the little fingers which had long wearily fluttered for just such confinement. Merry, romping girls danced by, and made the woods echo with their rollicking noises. Ardent swains sighed their heart-jingle into appreciative ears; but we heard nothing, saw nothing but ourselves. Laugh all you who may at love at first sight ; but the light which first dawns upon and feeds the dark, hungry soul, is the most exquisitely dazzling of all lights. It is sunlight, moonlight, starlight combined. It is the odor of rose, lily, and mignonette ! it is the pure juice of the grape; the bright sparkle of champagne; the music of the spheres! in short, heaven itself. But why dwell upon such delights ? Is every heart- pleasure necessarily fleeting? Must a joy be born, and like the love a mother bears ber darling, when the infant is laid in the longing arms, be chastened and subdued by care, heartache, and keen disappointment? Is a love , like the beautiful things in nature, born to die ? Shall it always be that the tree which blossoms the fairest, bears the most luscious fruit, make itself keenly enjoyable, for a brief season lose its glorious foliage, and without a shield from the wind, brave both storm and tempest ? My experience says—yes. Nature and mind are analogous. Love is fleeting : and the more ardent, the more evanescent. Ned Williams ? Long ago I forgave him ; for, after all, the man was no more culpable for loving and reloving, loving especially, and loving generally, than the butterfly is to blame for sipping the honey from shrub, daisy, and rose. God made him a butterfly- and who dares say that in exhausting the dew from the lovely petals he does not fulfill the mission he was sent to perform ? Well, Ned and I were engaged : for a long time no cloud overspread the horizon of our love ! My affection was strong, earnest, and unsuspicious. Did my betrothed leave me for a party, where he had promised to enliven the company from his unequaled fund of entertainment, I was certain that he only went to oblige the people, not because he desired to, or was happy away from me ! Did he attend a young lady home from church, or spend an occasional evening without me, it was all right, because Ned did it, and Ned loved me, and was as true to his allegiance as was ever olden knight to the lady of his choice. I never dreamed of any other side to the picture. Oh! ye blind, deceitful god ! how I have watched ye from a safe distance ever since. Summer was passing, and our picnics, for the season, were nearly over, when a stranger came among us. Nellie Wayne, bless her sweet face ! Why I did not suspect from the beginning that my butterfly, Ned, must of a necessity be attracted to her, I cannot imngine; and more than this, understanding so thoroughly my own woman's nature and capacity for loving, why I did not know that Nellie must fall desperately in love with Ned? But the god kept me blind until the last. One more picnic was proposed, and in honor of Nellie. We were to go down to the sea-shore, a few miles from our village, and there spend the day. I don't know how it was that I came to wander away alone on that occasion; but Ned was singing a comic arrangement of Casta Diva, and
