362 I GO A -FISHING. 



I never found the head of a dead woman in Egypt 

 adorned with false hair, but I have seen abundant speci- 

 mens of it from the tombs, where it had been laid with 

 other ornaments, as if perchance it might be needed in 

 the far-off morning. And this curl adorned a head which 

 in life had every claim to civilization which any lady pos- 

 sesses who may read these words, and those locks of hair 

 have been seen in halls whose splendor surpassed our 

 Western dreams, among statesmen and soldiers, from 

 whom, if we could unseal their lips, we might learn les- 

 sons of civilization unknown to us of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury. 



But what was that yonder in the forest which startled 

 me so that I sat up on the rock and looked intently into 

 the strange cross lights of the moon among the bushes ? 

 Who was that, standing beyond the great column by the 

 obelisk? and that? and that? Was it a breeze swaying 

 the dogwood and moose-berry bushes, or were those ver- 

 ily ghosts ? A weary fisherman, resting on his way home 

 may well see visions in such a lonesome forest and such 

 a moonlight. Face after face looked at me around that 

 old column. It was the trunk of a mighty birch, but it 

 looked more like the stone reared by Osirei. There was 

 visible an old man's face. Alas, for the old man. The 

 years that have been counted and stored away in God's 

 memory and the memory of men since he departed, have 

 made those once solemn and commanding features dust, 

 while they have drawn these lines on mine. He was the 

 guide of my boyhood, the beloved companion of my ma- 

 turing years. His voice was exceedingly musical, as he 

 read aloud to me his favorite passages in Homer, and 

 bade me translate while he recited from memory the im- 

 passioned eloquence of the Medea. He seemed to be 



