ily name, set me upon another train of thought. It was good to see in what close and quiet proximity they lay there; whatever difference of age, or position, or opinion, whatever personal antipathies, or jealousies, or misapprehensions, had kept them apart in their lives. I doubted not that I had chanced upon the type of a spiritual reality. The souls of the dead, probably, mingle in the great company of the Departed, without a thought of the dislikes. and repulsions that made some of them so disagreeable to each other on earth. A common glory or a common gloom unites them in a close fraternity of hope or despair, joy or misery.

Finally, I ascended the topmost swell of the hill, and sat down on a fallen stone to consider the view,-made up of a pretty curve of road, mottled with tree-shadows; two or three meadows, with grass so green that it seemed to have a lustre in it; a bit of forest; and an open, blue eye of Rustic's Pond, mirroring the nearest objects with a fidelity that might make one doubt which was the substance, which the reflection ;-that trite material of which Nature, everywhere and endlessly, makes fresh, sparkling pictures, each with its own peculiar and exceeding charm. Here, Mrs. Divine came to look for me.

Who can tell when the day begins to wane? There seemed not one sunbeam the less, no fainter tints, no deeper shadows, yet, as we turned homeward, we felt a nameless something in the air, and saw and heard it in every hue and tone, telling us that the day was fading-its face already turned toward the oncoming Night.

And who can tell when his life begins to go down the hill? Few ever realize that they have passed its topmost point, until they are already far down the slope; in sight of the Valley of Shadow at its foot!

XV.

HIERE AND THERE.

F you were less ready to play the part of a viaduct, Francesca, I do not know but I should take to writing to my father's spirit. I remember being profoundly affected, when I was a school girl, by the information that among the posthumous papers of a certain shy, reticent assistant teacher, whom nobody ever seemed to understand or fraternize with, had been found a large package of letters written to an early friend, over whose grave the grass had grown green for years. This friend had been her only confidant during her life; and after her death, the lonely survivor had gone on, writing to her just as if she had been alive;-every week adding a closely written epistle, duly signed, sealed and addressed, to the growing pile; through whose whole sombre texture ran a touching story of long, wasting disappointment and heart-ache, like a crimson thread. Without this resource, doubtless her poor, proud, sensitive heart would have broken somewhat earlier than it did! The recollection moves me, even now. There is an exquisite pathos in the lonely girl's fidelity to the one friendship of her life; in the confi dence which death could not break, nor the slow lapse of sorrowful years wear away. I can almost see the disembodied spirit bending tenderly over each letter as it was deposited in its place, and reading its contents with a face of still brightness; pitiful for the momentary affliction of

her earth-bound friend, but rejoicing in the knowledge of the exceeding glory for which it was so tenderly preparing her.

Nevertheless, I am glad that I am writing for living eyes and a living, human sympathy. For no others, I am certain, should I feel free to set down so many minute and apparently trivial details, as are necessary to a clear idea of this Shiloh-life and my growing connection with it.

The fortnight following the burial of Maggie Warren was fruitful only in commonplace events; some of which, however, require brief mention.

Mr. Taylor spent some days in Shiloh, visiting industriously among the people, and trying to kindle in them some small spark of interest in response to his own glowing enthusiasm. They all liked him, even the most prejudiced and indifferent among them, he was so earnest, so genuine, there was such a cheerful alacrity in his manner, such a fresh, breezy buoyancy in his tone. There was no resisting the cheerful contagion of his hopefulness, or the steady, stealing influence of his bright, ardent, energetic talk. He contrived to throw such an air of reasonableness, and even of practicability, over whatever he proposed or planned, and he had so ready a response to every objection, that, so far as words went, he soon had everything his own way. Some of those who had been most adverse to Mrs. Prescott's movement, and had stigmatized it as the purest folly, were swept along on the swift current of his assertion and argument almost to the point of thinking that it might be a good thing, after all; and if, on reflection, they were inclined to smile at him as visionary, and at themselves for their momentary conversion, they respected him, none tho less, for the purity of his motives and the unselfishness of his zeal. Others, belonging to that vast multitude which, in religious enterprises, lets "I dare not wait upon 'I would," shook their heads with a kind of mournful pity over the obstacles and the disappointments they foresaw in

his path; but they were deeply touched, nevertheless, by his generous confidence in himself and in them, and there was not a grain of contempt infused into the pity. And all this, despite his ways were unlike their ways, his thoughts very different from their thoughts, his standards far re moved from their standards; despite, too, his city breeding, and his often amusing ignorance of rural customs and agricultural lore. In these large, low, firelit farm kitchens; where the grim shade of the tenacious, old-time conservatism lurks longest, and opposes the most steady and determined resistance to innovation; his visit left an influence like that of a fresh breeze from a mountain top, or a sunbeam struggling through a fog. And as both these airy visitants, in whatever narrow, sombre, or sordid place they chance to stray, immediately create for themselves a certain congruity and fitness in being there; so Mr. Taylor seemed at once to harmonize with his surroundings:-every segment of his character, in virtue of some curious, unsuspected agreement of apparently diverse angles, dovetailed into the Shiloh-life, as if it had been made for it.

Having finished his visitation, and taken it for granted that everybody encouraged him, because nobody could long have the hardihood to maintain an attitude of discouragement against his strenuous hope and zeal,—he went his way to arrange for the removal of his family hither; it being understood, however, that he should officiate on the intervening Sundays.

A day or two after, I saw, from my window, Essie Volger approaching the house. She reined her shaggy little Canadian pony deftly up to the gate, sprang lightly from the buggy to the ground, fastened the horse to a post, greeted Uncle True cheerily, whistled to Leo, and had wellnigh crossed the threshold before I could get down to meet her.

"Ah! Miss Frost, it is such a lovely day!" she began, "too lovely, by far, to waste indoors!"

"So my senses have been telling me."

"Pray listen to them! For, though I cannot say,

'My boat is by the shore-'

my buggy is at the door, and if you will consent to receive this first, formal call of mine in that, you can be enjoying a drive at the same time."

She took me to the bank of the Housatonic; at this point, a clear, rapid, curving stream, forest-shadowed on one side, and quickly losing itself among grassy and wooded hills. Much of the way was by a steep and hilly road, across which the boughs of the trees met and interlaced; with here and there picturesque glimpses of the winding, shimmering stream below. At the river's brink, we quitted the buggy and strolled down the wooded bank, listening to the rippling current, and gathering ferns and flowers. Such an excursion is a ready promoter of acquaintance; I came home feeling that years of association, however enjoyable, could add but little to my knowledge of Miss Essie. Not that her character is so shallow, but because it is so clear. Sometimes, the waters of a fountain. are so pellucid, allowing the shells and pebbles of its bed to be distinctly seen, that a careless observer is easily deceived in regard to its depth. And not every one, seeing her so frank, so open, so sparkling, too,—would give her credit for the real depth and strength of her pure, womanly

nature.

It was a little thing that gave me the opportunity of measuring it more accurately.

"This dear old river!" she exclaimed, dipping her fingers into it, caressingly. "It is like a friend! I have known and loved it from childhood."

"Are you sure that it is the same old river?" I asked. "Recollect that, though you may always have seen the same shape of flood, you have never looked twice upon the same waves."