“You give me new courage.  I will get a trades-directory and begin at once.”

“To-morrow, my friend.  She hasn’t got a place yet, probably.”

“So much the better.  I shall save her the necessity.”

“Go, then,” said Easelmann.  “You’ll be happier, I suppose, to be running your legs off, if it is to no purpose.  A lover with a new impulse is like a rocket when the fuse is lighted; he must needs go off with a rush, or ignobly fizz out.”

“Farewell, for to-day.  I’ll see you to-morrow,” said Greenleaf, already some paces off.

[To be continued.]

PRAYER FOR LIFE.

  Oh, let me not die young! 
  Full-hearted, yet without a tongue,—­
  Thy green earth stretched before my feet, untrod,—­
  Thy blue sky bending over,
  As her most tender lover,
  With infinite meaning in its starry eyes,
  Full of thy silent majesty, O God! 
  And wild, weird whispers from the solemn deep
  Of the Great Sea ascending, with the sweep
  Of the Wind-angel’s wings across the skies,
  Burdened with hints of awful memories,
  Whose half-guessed grandeur thrills us till we weep!—­
  I love thy marvellous world too well—­
  Its sunny nooks of hill and dell,
  Its majesty of mountains, and the swell
  Of volumed waters—­for my heart to yearn
  Away from the deep truth which veils its splendor
  In beauty there less dazzling, but more tender. 
  With grave delight I turn
  To all its glories, from the tiniest bloom
  Whose hour-long life just sweetens its own tomb
  As with funereal spices,
  To the far stars which burn
  And blossom in fire through their vast periods,—­
  Borne in thy palm,
  Like the pale lotus in the hand of Isis,
  When throned white, and calm,
  In solemn conclave of the mythic gods.

  Oh, let me not die young,
  A brother unclaimed among
  The countless millions of thy happy flock,
  Whose deepest joy is to obey,
  Whereby they feel the measured sway
  Of thy life in them, their own living part,
  Whether in centuried pulses of the rock
  By slow disintegration
  Ascending to its higher,
  Or the quick fluttering of the Storm-god’s heart,—­
  An instant’s palpitation
  Through all its arteries of fire! 
  One common blood runs down life’s myriad veins,
  From Archangelic Hierarchs who float
  Broad-winged in the God-glory, to the mote
  That trembles with a braided dance
  In the warm sunset’s vivid glance;
  And one great Heart that boundless flow sustains! 
  In all the creatures of thy hand divine

  Thy love-light is a living guest,
  Whether a petal’s palm confine
  Its glitter to a lily’s breast,
  Or in unbounded space a starry line
  Stretches, till flagging Thought must droop her wing to rest.