 its old familiar welcome; everything was quiet, warm, and
cheering, and in happy contrast to the gloom and darkness I had quitted.
    I sat down in my easy-chair, and falling back upon its ample cushions,
pictured to myself the child in her bed; alone, unwatched, uncared for, (save by
angels,) yet sleeping peacefully. So very young, so spiritual, so slight and
fairylike a creature passing the long dull nights in such an uncongenial place!
I could not dismiss it from my thoughts.
    We are so much in the habit of allowing impressions to be made upon us by
external objects, which should be produced by reflection alone, but which,
without such visible aids, often escape us, that I am not sure I should have
been so thoroughly possessed by this one subject, but for the heaps of fantastic
things I had seen huddled together in the curiosity-dealer's warehouse. These,
crowding on my mind, in connection with the child, and gathering round her, as
it were, brought her condition palpably before me. I had her image, without any
effort of imagination, surrounded and beset by everything that was foreign to
its nature, and farthest removed from the sympathies of her sex and age. If
these helps to my fancy had all been wanting, and I had been forced to imagine
her in a common chamber, with nothing unusual or uncouth in its appearance, it
is very probable that I should have been less impressed with her strange and
solitary state. As it was, she seemed to exist in a kind of allegory; and,
having these shapes about her, claimed my interest so strongly, that (as I have
already remarked) I could not dismiss her from my recollection, do what I would.
    »It would be a curious speculation,« said I, after some restless turns
across and across the room, »to imagine her in her future life, holding her
solitary way among a crowd of wild grotesque companions; the only pure, fresh,
youthful object in the throng. It would be curious to find -«
    I checked myself here, for the theme was carrying me along with it at a
great pace, and I already saw before me a region on which I was little disposed
to enter. I agreed with myself that this was idle musing, and resolved to go to
bed, and court forgetfulness.
    But, all that night, waking or in my sleep, the same thoughts recurred, and
the same images retained possession of my brain. I had, ever before me, the
