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RAMPARTS; or THE DAY OF REPENTANCE: vaudeville with new songs to the most
favorite airs.' The deuce! Where did I get all this rubbish? Some one must
have slipped it slyly into my pocket for a joke. There is too a letter to me;
a crumpled letter and the seal broken."

Yes; it was not a very polite epistle from the manager of a theatre, in which
both pieces were flatly refused.

"Hem! hem!" said the clerk breathlessly, and quite exhausted he seated himself
on a bank. His thoughts were so elastic, his heart so tender; and
involuntarily he picked one of the nearest flowers. It is a simple daisy, just
bursting out of the bud. What the botanist tells us after a number of
imperfect lectures, the flower proclaimed in a minute. It related the mythus
of its birth, told of the power of the sun-light that spread out its delicate
leaves, and forced them to impregnate the air with their incense--and then he
thought of the manifold struggles of life, which in like manner awaken the
budding flowers of feeling in our bosom. Light and air contend with chivalric
emulation for the love of the fair flower that bestowed her chief favors on
the latter; full of longing she turned towards the light, and as soon as it
vanished, rolled her tender leaves together and slept in the embraces of the
air. "It is the light which adorns me," said the flower.

"But 'tis the air which enables thee to breathe," said the poet's voice.

Close by stood a boy who dashed his stick into a wet ditch. The drops of water
splashed up to the green leafy roof, and the clerk thought of the million of
ephemera which in a single drop were thrown up to a height, that was as great
doubtless for their size, as for us if we were to be hurled above the clouds.
While he thought of this and of the whole metamorphosis he had undergone, he
smiled and said, "I sleep and dream; but it is wonderful how one can dream so
naturally, and know besides so exactly that it is but a dream. If only
to-morrow on awaking, I could again call all to mind so vividly! I seem in
unusually good spirits; my perception of things is clear, I feel as light and
cheerful as though I were in heaven; but I know for a certainty, that if
to-morrow a dim remembrance of it should swim before my mind, it will then
seem nothing but stupid nonsense, as I have often experienced
already--especially before I enlisted under the banner of the police, for that
dispels like a whirlwind all the visions of an unfettered imagination. All we
hear or say in a dream that is fair and beautiful is like the gold of the
subterranean spirits; it is rich and splendid when it is given us, but viewed
by daylight we find only withered leaves. Alas!" he sighed quite sorrowful,
and gazed at the chirping birds that hopped contentedly from branch to branch,
"they are much better off than I! To fly must be a heavenly art; and happy do
I prize that creature in which it is innate. Yes! Could I exchange my nature

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