Then, remembering my experience with the trunk, I approached at one
extreme, scaled the headboard, fell over into an absorbing sea of
feathers, and, at that very instant it seemed, the perplexing nature of
mortal affairs ceased to burden my mind.
CHAPTER II.
I BLOW THE HORN.
Morning dawned on my mission to Wallencamp. My wakening was not an
Enthusiastic one. Slowly my bewildered vision became fixed on an object
on the wall opposite, as the least fantastic amid a group of objects. It
was a sketch in water-colors of a woman in an expansive hoop and a skirt
of brilliant hue, flounced to the waist. She stood with a singularly
erect and dauntless front, over a grave on which was written "Consort." I
observed, with a childlike wonder, which concealed no latent vein of
criticism, the glowing carmine of her cheeks, the unmixed blue of her
pupilless eyes, from a point exactly in the centre of which a geometric
row of tears curved to the earth. A weeping willow--somewhat too green,
alas!--drooped with evident reluctance over the scene, but cast no shade
on its contrasting richness. The title of the piece was "_Bereavement_"
By some strange means, it served as the pole-star to my wandering
thoughts.
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