Zoë sat by herself and mourned silently for her loss. Too young to reason much, constitutionally sentimental, early thrown into circumstances which favored reserve, not understood by her teacher, she was fast growing morbid and unnatural by a one-sided development. Like the passion-flower torn up by the roots and planted against a wall of ice, the tendrils of her soul spread hither and thither striving instinctively to reach some support. With the elements of a self-sacrificing, aspiring life prematurely developing, of a nervous and anxious temperament, she had found relief and hope through confiding in Thorwaldsen, and at night she scarcely slept for the joyful visions which visited her. The great artist was her friend. He, too, had dreamed like herself, and to him she would go to slake her yearning to be loved and feel that she could look straight into his eye without being repelled by a wondering, critical stare. Now her hope was cut off. With this painful experience adding a long term to her life, she was again thrust back upon herself, and her feelings at first stunned, now gushed forth in uncontrollable weeping.

"How foolish I am!" she said to herself; "as if a little girl of nine has a right to be so sorry because this great man, whom all Denmark and the world worship, has died. He never said much to me and I less to him, and Miss Ingemann always seemed afraid lest I should trouble him when I stood by his knee. I would not have her know that I was crying so for him for the world. I will wash my eyes that she may not see my tears. But O! was not his soft hand upon my head like this cold bath to my eyelids? I never, never shall feel it again!" and she burst forth afresh. "But I must control myself, as Miss Ingemann calls it. I will go to the window and look out and think of something else. There sits a poor tired man in the street, and two little children are giving him something, and he stretches out his hand and pats their heads. It looks like Thorwaldsen's Christ blessing little children.

O, I never shall hear him tell me again of the Christ and make me feel as if I could be like him! What, what shall I do! I am afraid the feeling which made me so happy will leave me;" and she clasped her hands and looked up as in earnest entreaty. "But hush! some one is coming. No, the step has passed by; but I must get ready to go to the funeral. How the crowds begin to pour along! how eager they are to get a place where they can see the parade well! This is their way of being sorry, I suppose. But can I walk in the long procession, with the bright sun shining into my face so that people can see me, if I cannot help crying? And how can I help it when everybody has lost a friend, and I the most of all! And they will say: 'The great and good Thorwaldsen is dead! And the organ will play so mournfully, and that I cannot bear up under. I shall certainly groan and cry aloud. O no! I cannot go to the funeral. I must stay by myself. I must, I must;" and she threw herself upon the bed and hid her face in the pillow to still her sobs.

Miss Holberg came into the room-"Come, my dear, I will help you to dress before I make my own toilet." "I cannot go to the funeral."

"Not go to our friend's funeral !" But seeing the child's swollen eyes, she guessed the cause, and she knew her well enough to speak gently, but not to go to the deepest springs of her nature to console her. "Yes, dear, I see. We all loved Thorwaldsen, and feel very sad to lose him; but we must submit to God's will and do our best to honor his memory. You wish to do that, do you not?"

"O Miss Holberg! let me stay at home; please, please, do! I feel as if I should drop down in the street. Do ask Miss Ingemann to let me !"

She really looked so sick and miserable and her step tottered so, that knowing she was not strong, she feared she would not sustain the fatigue, and therefore, went to Miss Ingemann and reported her state.

She was disappointed to have her arrangements disturbed, for the brunette and blonde were to form a pretty contrast in the procession, and really sorry that the child should have one of those troublesome headaches so malapropos; but she was too busy to see her personally, and directing that some simple remedies should be given her pupil, she accompanied the others to the church.

So Zoë lost the opportunity of regulating her sensibilities, diseased by solitude, and her idiosyncrasies of temperament, by the healthy influence of contact with other minds and right participation in a becoming pageant; but she sat alone exaggerating the grief of the audience, and the desolation caused by their loss, till a morbid impression was fixed in her mind by an event which might otherwise have been presented to her under such inspiring aspects. For this born peasant, but nature's noble, from humble poverty and a frigid clime had worked his way upward to a post which kings looked up to, and had drawn from his calm but burning soul, images of beauty, sanctity and power, which the world has caught glimpses of enough to honor, but which are to inspire and lead the human soul far in the distant future.

And now, that the drapery of mortality had fallen from him, he stands revealed as two great lives, one upon earth so vailed as not to startle, but to allure to excellence; the other, "where no eye hath seen, nor ear heard, nor heart conceived"— the glory which shall be revealed to the lovers and doers of the good!

Poor Zoe! her young heart was only too alive to the power and beauty of the first life; and what a light is quenched, when a great and pure nature bids adieu to it! But to balance this premature sensibility, there were needed a deeper and more inspiring mode of consolation, a clearer insight into the other, than her teacher gave her, and she suffered accordingly.

66

CHAPTER VIII.

"The law's delay."

SHAKSPEARE.

MOTHER, here is Mr. Ernest's gardener, with your plants which he promised you. Shall I ask him to carry them into the yard?" said Fred Körner, one bright morning early in the month of May.

"Yes, my boy, and say, I thank Mr. Ernest, for his kindness."

As soon as that bright notable lady had finished her household arrangements for the morning above stairs, dusting here and there a bureau or table in her bedroom, smoothing a wrinkle left in the counterpane, picking up the threads from the carpet, she went into the parlor. Before one could count twenty, there was a general overturn of the furniture; sofas were wheeled from one corner to the other; the great chairs had an easy hob-nobbing squint given to each other, as they were stationed at opposite angles; and she mentally resolved, that on the first leisure day she would pull up those set-looking bookcases by the roots, and let them know that they were not to stand still all their lives in this age of progress. They should change sides like the politicians all over the world.

Here was little Denmark all in a fuss and fury about Schleswig Holstein, her husband's birthplace. She hoped it would have its own way for his sake, and had she not read the American newspapers, which Mrs. Stephenson, the minister's wife from that country, had lent her?

She had borrowed them at first to improve her knowledge of the idioms of the English language, but there was such life and fun and information in those New York papers, especially in one called the Tribune, that she must read them weekly.

"No, no, her bookcases should not be old fogies, they should march with the times; and if some day she could catch her brother-in-law, the Lutheran minister, whose church she attended, and who doted even on the odor of an old book-no, she believed on the whole it was a new one-would not they have a good time in making a thorough revolution among them? And those old pamphlets, they should make a bonfire unless the parson wanted them, which he no doubt would. What a saint his wife must be to suffer so much old lumber about! Poor victim," she thought "on the whole she would not offer them to him, but for her sake put them into the fire at once."

After giving the last touch and turn to the ornaments about the room, to make them look as unlike to themselves as possible, she went into her little yard.

It would not be called a large territory by a countryman, but for the city, it was not to be despised by any means, and with the contributions of her different friends, especially Mr. Ernest's, and what the seed-store afforded, and the hot-house plants from Mr. Hoffman that he had just brought her, which would give the last touch to its glory, she already saw in her fancy quite a little greenery around her.

"Yes, her house, with its surroundings, should be a real home to her in the best sense, and it should be a restingplace to the soul of her beloved when he returned each night from his labors, and her children should have sweet and lovely associations through its beauty with their childhood; and how easy it would be, through the springing grass and blooming flowers, to lead their thoughts and affections to the good Giver of all this enjoyment!"