"That will answer better."
"Or a rocket without a stick?"
"I have seen rockets; but I do not know what the stick is. What is it? What is it for?"
"To give balance and aim to the rocket—make it, as the transcendentalists say, mount skyward, and end in stars and 'golden rain.'"
"Very fine! And how if it has no stick?"
"Then it sparkles, and blazes, and hisses on the ground; flies up and down, this way and that, plays the deuse with every thing and every body, and at last blows itself up to no purpose."
"Ah, I see that the stick is very necessary. I will try to get one."
"You speak in a bantering tone," said Morton, "but you are in earnest."
"I am in earnest!" exclaimed Fanny Euston, with a sudden change of voice and manner. "Every word that you have spoken is true. I am driven hither and thither by feelings and impulses,—some bad, some good,—chasing every new fancy like so many butterflies or will-o'-the-wisps,—without thinking of results—restless—dissatisfied—finding no life but in the excitement of the moment. Sometimes I have hints of better things. Glimpses of light break in upon me; but they come, and they go again. I have no rule of life, no guiding star."
Morton looked at his companion not without a certain sense of victory. He saw that he had gained, for the moment at least, an influence over her, and roused her to the expression of feelings to which, perhaps, she had never given utterance before. Yet his own mind was any thing but tranquil. Something more than admiration was stirring within him. He felt impelled to explore farther the proud spirit which had already yielded up to him some of its secrets. But he felt that, with her eyes upon him, he could not speak without committing himself farther than he was prepared to do. In this dilemma he determined to retreat—a resolution for which he was entitled to no little credit, if its merit is to be measured by the effort it cost him. He rose from his seat.