ousness; which, I have learned, she uses instinctively as a mask to her deeper feelings. "Perhaps you'll never know, till you get there, how much you have had to do with it. Sunday School teachings sometimes rebound from the children and hit the parents. Seeing Gordon and Effie so earnestly trotting and tumbling heavenward, under your guidance, -I could not well help asking myself whither my own ways tended. You may be sure that it has taken some of the conceit out of me, to find that what I did so unwil lingly, as a great favor to you and a wonderful condescension to the Sunday School cause in Shiloh, turns out to have been, humanly speaking, the salvation of my children and myself. To be sure, I was a Church member before, and active enough in Church work, after my fashion; but I suspect I had as little of the Christian spirit as any Hottentot."

I was dumb. Never did I feel so humbled. It was so plain to me that it was not "I," weakly and wearily oscillating between Bona and Mala, but the grace of God, that had done it! Mrs. Danforth had been very far from my thoughts, in my Sunday School work.

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She wiped her eyes, and recurred to the preceding topic. "I suppose I must go and call on Pearl," said she, though she doesn't deserve it. To think that the little minx should have gone straight past my door with you, and not have stopped!-not even long enough for that sorely tried husband of hers to come up. But it is just like her! I know she enjoyed her sudden, single-handed descent upon those startled Bryers a great deal better than any more commonplace introduction. She fairly luxuri ated in that absurd scene. Well! I will go and see her this evening, and tell her of her good fortune, if such it is to be called.”

The next morning, Mrs. Danforth knocked at the open door of the out-room, where Ruth and I were seated at the piano.

"I thought I would just stop in and tell you that I found only an empty nest," she said, as we shook hands. "The bird is flown."

"What-who!" I asked, bewildered.

"Who? Pearl-Daisy-Mrs. Frederick Thorne. I have just come from the Bryers; I did not go up there last night, I had a sick headache. Meanwhile, Carrie had made Rick a statement of facts, as you requested her to do. He imparted them to his wife. The name of Chester Danforth made the whole thing clear to Pearl's very quick comprehension. Finale: she and Rick started for New Orleans at six o'clock this morning. Bon voyage!"

2 c

XXXVII.

THE SUMMER'S WORK.

HE summer is fast gliding by-a summer of some pleasure, of more labor, of multiplying interests, of much that has left a rich residuum of experience in the depths of my heart. It has made life's purpose and significance clearer to me. It has taught me that, as our nature is constituted, and under its present conditions, we are made more contented, as well as wiser, by a due admixture of sorrow and disappointment in our earthly cup. The life that is rightly lived, grows richer by its losses and gladder through its tears. Not only "knowledge," but joy, "by suffering entereth." So long as we make earthly happiness an end, and seek it directly, we are certain to miss it, and to be continually chilled and soured and disappointed thereby; but as soon as we make up our minds to do without it, and put submission, usefulness, an earnest striving after holiness, in its place, we are apt to find it quietly waiting upon them, as their humble handmaiden.

So much of truth has the summer brought to me in its gliding by. Let us see what it has brought to others,—for it has suffered none of the persons left behind by these chronicles to stand quite still.

Alice Prescott took to the study of Italian as a bird to the air. So far, the poet's dower is hers-she has the gift of tongues.

Moreover, the readings long ago inaugurated have been quietly educating her taste, and deepening her thought. For her sake, I have made frequent selections from the poets, and accompanied the reading thereof with copious commentary, analysis, and criticism. I left these to do their silent work. That they did it I knew well, not only by frequently surprising Alice with a pencil and a scrap of paper in her hands, and the pleasant trouble of poetic travail in her face; but by seeing the same scraps thrust silently and despondently into the kitchen fire. It was long ere I put forth a hand to save one of these fro doom.

"I hope I have your permission to read this," said I when I had done so.

"If it were worth reading, I would have brought it to you unasked. Do not mortify me by looking at it!" "Is it lately written ?"

"Oh, no; I wrote it more than a fortnight ago." "Did it not seem worth reading to you, then?"

"Ah! yes, everything does, at first. But, in a few days, all the flavor, all the life, have gone out of it. It is wishy-washy, and sickens me! It is cold and dead, and chills me! I hasten to put it out of my sight."

"That is to say that the inevitable moment of doubt, discouragement, and disgust, which comes to every worker for Art, be it painter, sculptor, or poet, comes also to you. It may be that it is the moment wherein his late standard, well-nigh reached, begins to mount higher; it may be the one which first reveals to him that the fairest, subtlest graces of his spiritual ideal are not to be embodied in color, marble, or rhythm. Still, that moment of disgust is not the time to judge fairly of the work done. Leave the decision to me whether this deserves the flames, or no."

"Not that," she exclaimed hurriedly; "let me bring you something I wrote this morning.”

"Which has not yet lost its flavor? No, thank you.

My praise, if I have any to give, will seem fearfully cold to that birth-warm effusion. While my criticism will not hurt this one nearly so much."

Her reluctance continued, and seemed so disproportionate to the occasion, that I was first puzzled, then half-vexed. Seeing that, she yielded at once, and sat with a downcast face and deeply-suffused cheeks, awaiting the result.

Of course, I expected to see "Lines to-" something, —summer, autumn, a cat, a flower, on the death of a friend, or some one of the hackneyed themes of youthful rhymers. What I actually saw, therefore, astonished me not a little. The verses had no title, and they ran thus:

"I have locked my heart, and I give you the key.
Throw it, I pray you, into the sea,

It's of no use to you, and still less to me.

"None shall come after you into that door,
None after you, and you enter no more!-
Let the dust gather on ceiling and floor.

"Let the dim ghost of our dead love all night
Stalk through the empty rooms, bare of delight,
Smell the brown roses that once were so white.

"Let it count over 'mid silence and dearth,

Hopes that once laughed in the glow on the hearth,

Snows that have chilled both the flame and the mirth.

Back to its grave let it silently creep,

Then, when the dawn o'er the hilltops doth peep,

Grave that the slow years dig ever more deep!"

The cause of Alice's reluctance was at once made clear to me. For a moment, I felt a flush on my own cheek. By means of that marvelous intuition of hers, she had arrived at some conception of the sort of chill and torpor that had fallen on my heart, and given it voice, in my stead. Strange that the poet's insight can almost dispense with