t where art thou?
A corner holds thine empty chair,
Thy playthings idly scattered there,
But speak to us of our despair!"

How sad and lonely especially is the mother who is called thus to weep the
loss of her departed infant. Oh, it is hard for her to give up that loved
one whose smile and childish glee were the light and the hope of her heart.
As she lays it in the cold, damp earth, and returns to her house of
mourning, and there contemplates its empty cradle, and that silent nursery,
once gladsome with its mirth, she feels the sinking weight of her
desolation. No light, no luxury, no friend, can fill the place of her lost
one.

And especially if this lost one be the first-born,--the first bud of
promise and of hope, how doubly painful is the bereavement. It makes our
home as dark and desolate as was the hour when Abraham with uplifted knife,
was about to send death to the throbbing heart of his beloved Isaac.
Nothing can supply the place of a first-born child; and home can never be
what it was when the sweet voice of that first-born child was heard. The
first green leaf of that household has faded; and though leaves may put
forth, and other buds of promise may unfold, and bright faces may light up
the home-hearth, and the sunshine of hope may play around the heart; but--

"They never can replace the bud our early fondness nurst,
They may be lovely and beloved, but not like thee--the first!"

Your heart continues lonely and desolate; its strings are broken; its
tenderest fibers wrenched; you continue to steal "beneath, the church-yard
tree, where the grass grows green and wild," and there weep over the grave
of your first maternal love; and like Rachael, refuse to be comforted
because he is not. Your grief is natural, and only those who have lost
their first-born can fully realize it:--

"Young mother! what can feeble friendship say,
To soothe the anguish of this mournful day?
They, they alone, whose hearts like thine have bled,
Know how the living sorrow for the dead;
I've felt it all,--alas! too well I know
How vain all earthly power to hush thy woe!
God cheer thee, childless mother! 'tis not given
For man to ward the blow that falls from heaven.
I've felt it all--as thou art feeling now;
Like thee, with stricken heart and aching brow,
I've sat and watched by dying beauty's bed,
And burning tears of hopeless anguish shed;
I've gazed upon the sweet, but pallid face,
And