John R. Macduff

“ So the Lark plunged down to the stream among the alders to bathe his wings and refresh himself. After the lustrations were duly completed, up again he rose like an arrow into the bright, blue sky. Says he to himself, [Pg 52] "I shall certainly be on the sharp out-look for that ascent of the Dewdrop. I can at all events be a silent spectator, if my services cannot otherwise be of use." ”

“ Growling, I am well aware, is a very uncommon demonstration of feeling in the case of a warbler. At all events, if it was not a growl, it was the nearest approach his beak could make to one, as he turned on the pillow which had been thus rudely disturbed. After, however, dozing for a few more hours, breakfast over, and his family seen to, off he sped with all his former cheerfulness and activity, till he found [Pg 29] himself perched on a branch of the very tallest elm-tree he could pick out, and one, too, right above where the rose and the dewdrop were. ”

“ AFTERWORDS. An Angel's Whisper.
he Soul—the Spirit of Man—apart from the Great Sun, becomes a teardrop. All is dark to it, when that All-glorious Source of Light and Love is away. Earth's sweetest songs cannot cheer it. But when the morning comes, and the Sun returns, the teardrop becomes a Dewdrop—gleaming like a diamond in [Pg 60] that peerless radiance. And at death, when it seems to be dissolved, and has apparently vanished from sight, it is exhaled—not annihilated. It passes upward to the Golden Gates, to be lost in the splendour of the Everlasting Light! ”

“ I know what you are. You are a rare diamond just taken from the crown of the Queen of the Morning. But, I confess, you look, too, very like the Dewdrop I spied at a distance, a few hours ago, on the tip of a rose-leaf."
"What a capital guesser you are, tiny minstrel," was the reply; "but you had better leave me with my diamond [Pg 49] name, at all events for the present. I shall not say whether some scientific bird-winged philosophers are right or wrong when they aver that, though the Queen of the Morning borrowed me, I am really and truly a jewel from the crown of the Sun ”

“ He just took breath, after the exhaustion and excitement, alike of both body and mind, which his aerial adventure had entailed; and then hastened straight to the home of the Nightingale and Thrush, to tell of the glorious ascent (what the old and learned creatures of the earth would have called [Pg 58] the apotheosis) of the Dewdrop on the rose-leaf; its severance into a million fragments; and how these, in the shape of a great army, had marched right within
The Sun's Golden Gates! ”

“ That I am sure of." [Pg 22]
"Ay!" said the Nightingale, with a sceptical, incredulous chirp.
"Yes! I always get bright, that I do, when the Sun shows himself. Look up to those stars, glittering in the sky. Do you know how they twinkle so? I am myself neither scholar nor philosopher, and have no pretensions either way. But a confidential friend once told me, and I quite believe him, that it is because they are either suns themselves, or else get light from that beautiful Sun you saw some time ago tingeing the sky with red and gold. ”

“ Why, the Nightingale, on his way from the rose-leaf, had, perhaps somewhat inconsiderately, tapped at his door, to inform him that all he could get out of the Dewdrop was (a very incomprehensible sentiment to a sleepy bird) , that he was a tear wept by the Sky when it lost the Sun; and he was bound in all sincerity to add, [Pg 28] that it seemed rather a dull and uninteresting tear to boot.
"I know better," growled the Thrush. (I have used the word "growl," because I can find no better to describe the reality.) ”

“ He seems to be floating and soaring, sauntering and curtseying, skimming and dipping, rollicking and frolicking—now up, now [Pg 40] down—now describing gyrations, now imitating a pendulum—now trying to be so steady with his fluttering wings, that he looks like a star twinkling in the day-time—in short, playing all sorts of droll antics, indulging in every imaginable pirouette and somersault, in all the world (in his case above the world) like a school-boy beginning his holidays; certainly appearing to put himself to a great deal of unnecessary trouble and exertion. ”

“ Some people say and believe (though I am not wise enough in bird-lore to know the truth of it) , that the lark family have eyes almost like a microscope; things invisible to us are said to be quite visible, and indeed conspicuous, to them. At all [Pg 53] events, this was true in the case of the present representative of that discriminating race. ”

“ Away, away, little bird," stammered out the Dewdrop, with some nervous twitchings presently to be accounted for; "I must prepare to meet this Queen Aurora. But," it added in a kind of after [Pg 33] thought, "the procession will soon be over; come back shortly and see me, if you please." The keen diamond eye twinkled with a humorous, comical expression when these last words were uttered; as much as to say, "I shall manage to cheat you, old fellow, wont I?"
The Thrush had some small quantum of poetry in his nature ”