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"I am tired of the dropping rain, and the bleak winds; I have lost my father and mother; I long to go home to the Summer-land." "There are hills to climb, and streams to cross," said the fairy. "But I have stout shoes," laughed Little One. "There are thorns and briers all along the road." "But I can bear to be pricked." "Then I will guide you," said the fairy. "How can that be?" cried the child.
Surely, I concluded, the translated inhabitants of the 'summer-land' cannot have doffed the homespun honesty of mortal life; all will either confess ignorance with regard to this skull, or display their truthfulness by a substantial harmony in their reports, and thereby furnish an indisputable, irrefragable proof of the truth of Spiritualism.
"This torch," said she, "is the measure of thy earthly days; and it shall not cease to burn until thou hast visited me in Avalon, and sat at table with King Arthur and the heroes who dwell there in that eternal summer-land."
So, when she journeyed with her parents to distant countries, she always hoped that some ship would bear her away to the Happy Isles; and when they once touched a bright shore, and some one cried, "The isles of Greece! the isles of Greece!" she thought she was home at last, and hardly dared look at the remembered shore. But, alas, she had not yet reached the Summer-land: this was not her home.
"Home!" echoed the lovely child; "my home is in the Summer-land. Oh, will you indeed carry me there?" Then she folded her white wings, and nestled in the lady's bosom like a gentle dove, and was borne to a beautiful castle that overlooked the sea. The water-nixies soon forgot her, for they could not hold her memory in their little humming-bird hearts. She was not of their race.
"You fancy you were once a sylphid," said he; "but there are no sylphids, my sweet one, and there is no Summer-land." The child became as dear to the lord and lady as their very heart's blood; and they forgot her foreign birth, and almost believed, as all the world did, that she was their own little daughter. But the child did not forget.
We had been so occupied with our study of these charming youngsters, that we bethought ourselves, only as one after another strange warbler appeared upon the scene, that migrating time had arrived, the wonderful procession to the summer-land had begun. This, alas! I could not stay to see.
"I see it," whispered the fairy: "I am close beside you." "Then," said Little One, fastening her dress, and putting on all the jewels she could possibly carry, "I think I will set out at once; for, if I make all speed, I may reach the Summer-land before that golden gate is closed." She pressed on, as the fairy directed, up a steep hill, her eyes fixed on the glowing eastern sky.
Certainly a place among the world's historic girls may rightly be accorded to this fair-haired young princess of the summer-land of France, the beautiful Clotilda of Burgundy. Thomas the Nestorian had been in many lands and in the midst of many dangers, but he had never before found himself in quite so unpleasant a position as now.
"The poor, sad earth!" said one of a glad band, belonging to a starry sphere above. "I long to comfort its people; but my mission is given me to guide souls through the death valley, and bear them to their friends in the summer-land. I must not leave my post of duty. Who will go?" "I will," said Love, in sweet, silvery tones.
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