ONLY A PEBBLE. m 21 



seizes him, and he grows up who knows how? into a 

 wondrous crystal, decked with bright colors, the very 

 flowers of the subterranean world of stones. In lonely, 

 silent caverns they light up the eternal night with a fire 

 given them long before man trod upon earth. Like 

 petrified sparks of light, here in diminutive littleness, 

 there in gigantic size, they lie scattered about. Mighty 

 rivers roll tiny fragments to the distant ocean. In the 

 crystal caves of St. Gothard, the clear, glorious rock- 

 crystal grows in bright, polished pyramids of one to eight 

 hundred pounds' weight ! Now and then it blends with 

 the gay colors of metals, and appears as beautiful topaz, 

 binding, as ' it were, the very smoke of subterranean fire 

 in graceful stone, or as precious amethyst, whose violet 

 crystals Aristotle praised for their beauty, and because, 

 worn on the breast, they protected the wearer against 

 the evils of drunkenness. Long and slender, fit to be 

 the sceptre of the earth's sovereign, the pebble-crystal 

 shines and glitters in the mines of Hungary; in Java 

 his brilliant splendor is humbly hid in loose sand, and 

 in our own Northern States it adorns the common sand- 

 stone with bright, beautiful points. And if you hold the 

 gay stone-flower to the light what sparkles in its trans- 

 parent bosom 1 ? The crystal holds in loving embrace a 

 kindred spirit : a pure drop of water rests clear and bright 

 in its glassy prison, and dreams of the sister drops that 

 flit without in eager haste and restless strife through the 

 wide, wide world. 



There is no form that the pebble does not assume, 

 no company that he despises. He is constantly changing 



