276 Clear Skies and Cloudy. 



sient pleasures is our life's aim, do we attain to 

 the fulness thereof shut up within our little 

 selves ? We need not fear that we shall lose out 

 precious selves because we wander in thought 

 beyond the shadows of our door-yard trees. I 

 pity those who look with admiration at the 

 bird's-eye maple or wrinkled oak that make the 

 sideboard and see in them only a pretty back- 

 ground for sparkling glass and glittering silver : 

 see this only, and are never carried in imagi- 

 nation or actually go to the forest where the oak 

 and maple grow. How frequently the soul of 

 honesty robs itself! How generally, I fancy, 

 women would cease to be murderers if they 

 traced back the history of the plumes in their 

 hats ! Is what Nature vouchsafes them of so 

 poor a quality, unattractive or repulsive, that 

 the skin of a bird is called for as an offset to 

 their ugliness ? Woman may think so, but her 

 plainness is only the more apparent when 

 crowned with an evidence of heartlessness. Be 

 she ever so careful, no housekeeper can prevent 

 animal life from crossing the door-sill or darting 

 through an open window. Around the evening 

 lamp curiously marked moths will flutter at 



