108 LTtstory of Gutta-Percha Willie.

Other times, the stars would be half blotted out
—all over the heavens—not with mist, but with
the light of the moon. Oh, how lovely she was!
—so calm! so all alone in the midst of the great
blue ocean! the sun of the night! She seemed
to hold up the tent of the heavens in a great silver
knot. And, like the stars above, all the flowers
below had lost their colour and looked pale and
wan, sweet and sad. It was just like what the
schoolmaster had been telling him about the
Elysium of the Greek and Latin poets, to which
they fancied the good people went when they
died—not half so glad and bright and busy as the
daylight world which they had left behind them,
and to which they always wanted to go back that
they might eat and drink and be merry again—
but oh, so tender and lovely in its mournfulness!

Several times in winter, looking out, he sawa
strange sight—the air so full of great snowflakes
that he could not see the moon through them,
although her light was visible all about them.
They came floating slowly down through the
dusky light, just as if they had been a precipitate
from that solution of moonbeams. He could hardly
persuade himself to go to bed, so fascinating was
the sight; but the cold would drive him to his
nest again,

Once the wheel-watchman pulled him up in the
midst of a terrible thunder-storm—when the East