The gates ajar. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.

The Gates Ajar. 227
October I6, midnight.
There is no such thing as sleep at present.
Writing is better than thinking.
Aunt Winifred went again to Worcester
to-day. She said that she had to buy trimming for Faith's sack.
She went alone, as usual, and Faith and I
kept each other company through the afternoon, -she on the floor with Mary Ann, I in
the easy-chair with Macaulay. As the light
began to fall level on the floor, I threw the
book aside,- being at the end of a volume,and, Mary Ann having exhausted her attractions, I surrendered unconditionally to the little
maiden.
She took me up garret, and down cellar, on
top of the wood-pile, and into the apple-trees;
I fathomed the mysteries of Old Man's Castle
and Still Palm; I was her grandmother, I was
her baby, I was a rabbit, I was a chestnut
horse, I was a watch-dog, I was a mild-tempered giant, I was a bear "warranted not to
eat little girls," I was a roaring hippopotamus
and a canary bird, I was Jeff Davis and I was
Moses in the bulrushes, and of what I was, the
time faileth me to tell.
It comes over me with a curious, mingled