A good many years since, an eminent dancing-master undertook to teach a number of my schoolboy companions a graceful and easy deportment; but comparatively few of us can be said as yet to have thoroughly attained it.

In the first days of their acquaintance, it seemed as if the light of the girl's face would have dispelled forever the darkness of her companion's Shadow, it was so mild and quiet a shining,not the mere outer lustre of beauty, but the deep informing expression of that Spirit which had companioned Sunny heavenward.

But old Mr. Henry McCain didn't die; instead he seemed to be caught up in the condition of static good health which frequently companions entire selfishness and a careful interest in oneself.

Ideal literature is the treasury of such genius in the past; here, as I said in the beginning, the wisdom of the soul is stored; and art, in all its forms, is immortal only in so far as it has done its share in this same labour of illumination, persuasion, and command, forecasting the spirit to be, companioning the spirit that is, sustaining us all in the effort to make ideal order actual in ourselves.

And this I did need, as you have perceived; for I was gone sudden weary of the heart, as I did say; and this might be because that I did never cease to have Destruction over me to companion my way, though as you will mind, I had been no more than twelve hours afoot, since my last sleeping.

A woman of her own years, also acquainted with grief, came to companion the old woman, a sort of lay sister in this little monastery of grief.