The voice said, "Your prayer is answered; he shall have it." Then she stood up. She covered her breast and held the garment tight upon it with her hand, and ran out of the forest, and the dead leaves fluttered under her feet. Out in the moonlight the soft air was blowing, and the sand glittered on the beach. She ran along the smooth shore, then suddenly she stood still. Out across the water there was something moving. She shaded her eyes and looked. It was a boat; it was sliding swiftly over the moonlight water out to sea. One stood upright in it; the face the moonlight did not show, but the figure she knew. It was passing swiftly; it seemed as if no one propelled it; the moonlight's shimmer did not let her see clearly, and the boat was far from shore, but it seemed almost as if there was another figure sitting in the stern. Faster and faster it glided over the water away, away. She ran along the shore; she came no nearer it. The garment she had held closed fluttered open; she stretched out her arms, and the moonlight shone on her long loose hair. Then a voice beside her whispered, "What is it?" She cried, "With my blood I bought the best of all gifts for him. I have come to bring it him! He is going from me!" The voice whispered softly, "Your prayer was answered. It was given him." She cried, "What is it?" The voice answered, "It is that he might leave you." The girl stood still. Far out at sea the boat was lost to sight beyond the moonlight sheen. The voice spoke softly, "Art thou contented?" She said, "I am contented.” At her feet the waves broke in long ripples softly on the shore. Complete. From "Dreams.» THE THE ARTIST'S SECRET HERE was an artist once, and he painted a picture. Other artists had colors richer and rarer, and painted more notable pictures. He painted his with one color; there was a wonderful red glow on it; and the people went up and down, saying, "We like the picture, we like the glow." The other artists came and said, "Where does he get his color from?" They asked him; and he smiled and said, "I cannot tell you"; and worked on with his head bent low. And one went to the far East and bought costly pigments, and made a rare color and painted, but after a time the picture faded. Another read in the old books, and made a color rich and rare, but when he had put it on the picture it was dead. But the artist painted on. Always the work got redder and redder, and the artist grew whiter and whiter. At last one day they found him dead before his picture, and they took him up to bury him. The other men looked about in all the pots and crucibles, but they found nothing they had not. And when they undressed him to put his graveclothes on him, they found above his left breast the mark of a wound. it was an old, old wound, that must have been there all his life, for the edges were old and hardened; but Death, who seals all things, had drawn the edges together, and closed it up. And they buried him. And still the people went about saying, “Where did he find his color from?” And it came to pass that after a while the artist was forgotten-but the work lived. Complete. From "Dreams.» 3388 SIR WALTER SCOTT (1771-1832) IR WALTER SCOTT's literary biographies are not in the strictest sense essays. They are narratives rather than essays, but they belong to the literature of the English essay cycle and deserve to be studied as part of it. His incomparable gifts as a novelist were developed through a method which is incompatible with high excellence in essay writing. He was the greatest romance writer of his century and he became so because his mind expressed itself through the construction of romantic plots as naturally as Addison and Lamb expressed theirs through monologue, characterized by that kaleidoscopic shifting of topics which is the charm of the essay and the despair of the novel. Even when he is at his best as an essayist, Sir Walter is still the great novelist, with the virtue of the novelist rather than of the essayist. But the narrative style he loves rather enhances than detracts from the interest of his essays. Whatever he lacks in attention to the art of construction, he more than makes good by crowding incident on incident and anecdote on anecdote, until we forget to regret the loss of the great essayist he might have become had he not been the incomparable story-teller he is. THE CHARACTER AND HABITS OF SWIFT WIFT was in person tall, strong, and well made, of a dark complexion, but with blue eyes, black and bushy eyebrows, nose somewhat aquiline, features which remarkably expressed the stern, haughty, and dauntless turn of his mind. He was never known to laugh, and his smiles are happily characterized by the well-known lines of Shakespeare. Indeed, the whole description of Cassius might be applied to Swift:— He is a great observer, and he looks Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort, |