Sitting on a bank that faced westward were observable two human figures in the closing twilight of an autumn day. They were gazing out upon the gorgeous west, and marking the successful struggles of the starry host to obtain visibility above. In all the rich flush that marked the pathway of the sun, and hung a glory around his place of exit, only one light had strength enough to be visible; and so pure was the atmosphere, that when the flush in the heavens retired, the splendid planet Venus seemed a delicate crescent—a diminutive moon, sinking downward to the western waters.
“How beautiful, dear Reuben,” said the young female, as she pressed closely the hand of her companion; “how beautiful the heavens above us are to-night. It seems as if a peculiar brilliancy were observable; and I hope it is not sinful for me to say that the glorious array of stars seems to have communicated to my bosom something of their own transparent light; an unusual serenity seems to descend from them to me, and I feel now as if I owed to them sensations of inexpressible delight—quiet, gentle, but full. Whence is this, Reuben?”
“May you not, my dear Miriam, have mistaken a cause for an effect? Is it not the quiet, peaceful delight of your heart that makes all outward objects more lovely to you? And, as the stars are the most brilliant and the most distant objects at the present moment, your feelings have connected themselves with those ministers of Him, and allowed that deep, mysterious connection of the planetary world with ours to work upon your imagination, as if the stars had a direct influence upon your condition.”
“Perhaps so; but I alluded to my feelings and not my condition. How beautifully did our Prophet King refer his own elevated sensations to the planetary world, ‘The moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained.’”
“True, true, my dearest Miriam; but you will recollect that while he made himself, and man generally, small in his contemplation of the heavens, it was not in comparison with them, it was comparing or contrasting man with Him who garnished the heavens, and wrote ‘all our members in a book.’ But are not your feelings, like mine, elevated with a hope, nay, with almost a certainty, that the elders will persuade my mother that the rights of our family can be retained, even though I marry you, or rather that the argument against our union was as unsustained by our laws as the attempt to give you to Salathiel was a violation of your affection and my rights.”
“I know not but that may be the case. I feel it, Reuben, warmly at my heart. Let me say it without violating the delicacy of a maiden’s feelings, that such was my love for you, that even the alternative to which I consented, though of no moment, gave me a severe pang.”
“What was that alternative?” asked the young man, with importunity.
“Simply, that if you should not live to marry me, then Salathiel might take me to wife.”
“I would haunt him with terrible bodings,” said Reuben, “even as Samuel frightened the falling Saul.”
“And I, dear Reuben,” said the maiden, with a smile, “should, I suppose, be the Witch of Endor to call up your wandering and jealous spirit.”