IN MAIDEN MEDITATION - I898 - IN MAIDEN MEDITATION AN EXPLANATION - HAVE wandered among many ages I and climes of literature, and have picked up various bits of knowledge and, beauties of sentiment. When, In Maiden Meditation, I began to record the flying thoughts that have come in the midst of dinings and dances, I was often puzzled to know the children of my own brain from those of my adopted fancy. However, Mr. Emerson ranks the quoter of a good thing next to its originator, and I acknowledge that I have been a very Sabine, both consciously and unconsciously, in appropriating other peoples goods. After all, who among us is wholly original Not Homer, singing the myths and traditions of olden Greece, nor yet inspired Shakespeare, embodying into classic and enduring form the legends of all lands and ages. Our inodern philosophers but interpret the wisdom of Plato, and each succeeding generation of wise men but gives the same answers to the same old questions that still defy solution. And there is no new thing under the sun. I have omitted the pestiferous quotation-mark, assuming that my readers have wandered as widely as I have. They . will recognize, I am sure, without further indication, the rare gems, which, as old friends, flash back smiles of recognition, and they will, I hope, appreciate and enjoy the new ones found on every page, deeming them worthy, if only in a small degree, of the good company in which they are found. It is, after all, only a simple record of a womans moods, caprices, tendernesses, dreams. May the mosaic be judged harmonious, whether the fragments be seized from Diogenes or Dr. Holmes, from Balzac, George Eliot, or Julien Gordon, or whether they are only the dreams and theories of . CONTENTS . PAGE AFTER THE BALL. IN MAIDEN MEDITATION, AFTER THE BALL. I heard as I hurriedly entered the door The church clock strike twelve The last waltz was just oer. ITH soul attuned to the exquisite W melody of that last waltz, I am alone with my thoughts. The frolicsome rhythm of the scherzo seems to tell of the gayety and frivolity of the hours past the soft andante engenders sentiment and peace which, as the sounding brass becomes louder and more rapid, is merged into the vanity, emulation, and contention of the ball-room. Music was before speech, and is now beyond speech for language is not subtle enough to express the deepest, highest, tenderest longings of the human heart. Music is a language conveying the most vivid iin pressions, embodying the whole range of emotions, from the delicate, ethereal tenderness of a dream of love, to the despairing mail of a nation borne down by the anguish of ultimate defeat. Perhaps a funeral march - the heavy, alternating chords in the bass sounding like the rhythmic tread of armed men, the sobbing chords of a minor harn ony freighted with the tragedy, the heart-break, of a thousand defeats - weigh one down as with the agony of a personal grief, when out of the tumult and anguish of the chant a heavenly melody soars like the prayer of faith. The soft murmur of a nocturne, the faint caressing diminuendo of the lullaby, the wailing harmony of the dirge, the melodious benediction that is like the Peace be with you of an angel, the tumuItuous crescendo of emotion, like a majestic epic, becomes an awakening and a revelation... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.