ELEVENTH LETTER-BOX.
Spring; Investiture; and Childbirth.
HAVE just risen from a singular dream; but the foregoing Box makes it natural. I dreamed that all was verdant, all full of odors; and I was looking up at a steeple-ball glittering in the sun, from my station in the window of a little white garden-house, my eyelids full of flower-pollen, my shoulders full of thin cherry-blossoms, and my ears full of humming from the neighboring beehives. Then, methought, advancing slowly through the beds, came the Hukelum Parson, and stept into the garden-house, and solemnly said to me: "Honored Sir, my wife has just brought me a little boy; and I make bold to solicit your Honor to do the holy office for the same, when it shall be received into the bosom of the church."
I naturally started up, and there was—Parson Fixlein standing bodily at my bedside, and requesting me to be godfather; for Thiennette had given him a son last night about one o'clock. The confinement had been as light and happy as could be conceived; for this reason, that the father had, some months before, been careful to provide one of those Klappersteins, as we call them, which are found in the aerie of the eagle, and therewith to alleviate the travail; for this stone performs, in its way, all
