the voluminous Duchess of Newcastle, in her “Ode on Melancholy,” describes among the symbols of hopeless gloom “the still moonshine night” and “a mill where rushing waters run about,”—­the sweetest natural images.  So woman has not so much to claim, after all.  In our own country, the early explorers seemed to find only horror in its woods and waterfalls.  Josselyn, in 1672, could only describe the summer splendor of the White Mountain region as “dauntingly terrible, being full of rocky hills, as thick as mole-hills in a meadow, and full of infinite thick woods.”  Father Hennepin spoke of Niagara, in the narrative still quoted in the guide-books, as a “frightful cataract”; though perhaps his original French phrase was softer.  And even John Adams could find no better name than “horrid chasm” for the gulf at Egg Rock, where he first saw the sea-anemone.

But we are lingering too long, perhaps, with this sweet April of smiles and tears.  It needs only to add that all her traditions are beautiful.  Ovid says well, that she was not named from aperire, to open, as some have thought, but from Aphrodite, goddess of beauty.  April holds Easter-time, St. George’s Day, and the Eve of St. Mark’s.  She has not, like her sister May in Germany, been transformed to a verb and made a synonyme for joy,—­“Deine Seele maiet den trueben Herbst”—­but April was believed in early ages to have been the birth-time of the world.  According to Venerable Bede, the point was first accurately determined at a council held at Jerusalem about A.D. 200, when, after much profound discussion, it was finally decided that the world’s birthday occurred on Sunday, April eighth,—­that is, at the vernal equinox and the full moon.  But April is certainly the birth-time of the year, at least, if not of the planet.  Its festivals are older than Christianity, older than the memory of man.  No sad associations cling to it, as to the month of June, in which month, says William of Malmesbury, kings are wont to go to war,—­“Quando solent reges ad arma procedere,”—­but it holds the Holy Week, and it is the Holy Month.  And in April Shakspeare was born, and in April he died.

THE PROFESSOR’S STORY.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE WHITE ASH.

When Helen returned to Elsie’s bedside, it was with a new and still deeper feeling of sympathy, such as the story told by Old Sophy might well awaken.  She understood, as never before, the singular fascination and as singular repulsion which she had long felt in Elsie’s presence.  It had not been without a great effort that she had forced herself to become the almost constant attendant of the sick girl; and now she was learning, but not for the first time, the blessed truth which so many good women have found out for themselves, that the hardest duty bravely performed soon becomes a habit, and tends in due time to transform itself into a pleasure.