fe are part of one great divine plan, to
which we must submit, however hard it may be. Like a rider who sees a
precipice before him, I drew in the reins. "Be it so, since it must be!"
I cried out; "but God's earth is not the place for complaints and
lamentations. Is it not a happiness to hold in my hand these lines which
she has written? and is not the hope of seeing her again in a short time
a greater bliss than I have ever deserved? 'Always keep the head above
water,' say all good life-swimmers. As well sink at once as allow the
water to run into your eyes and throat." If it is hard for us, amid
these little ills of life, to keep God's providence continually in view,
and if we hesitate, perhaps rightly, in every struggle, to step out of
the common-places of life into the presence of the divine, then life
ought to appear, to us at least, an art, if not a duty. What is more
disagreeable than the child who behaves ungovernably and grows dejected
and angry at every little loss and pain? On the other hand, nothing is
more beautiful than the child in whose tearful eyes the sunshine of joy
and innocence soon beams again, like the flower, which quivers and
trembles in the spring shower, and soon after blossoms and exhales its
fragrance, as the sun dries the tears upon its cheeks.

A good thought speedily occurred to me, that I could live both these days
with her, notwithstanding fate. For a long time I had intended to write
down the dear words she had said, and the many beautiful thoughts she had
confided to me; and so the days passed away in memory of the many
charming hours spent, together, and in the hope of a still more beautiful
future, and I was by her and with her, and lived in her, and felt the
nearness of her spirit and her love more than I had ever felt them when I
held her hand in mine.

How dear to me now are these leaves! How often have I read and re-read
them--not that I had forgotten one word she said, but they were the
witnesses of my happiness, and something looked out of them upon me like
the gaze of a friend, whose silence speaks more than words. The memory
of a past happiness, the memory of a past sorrow, the silent meditation
upon the past, when everything disappears that surrounds and restrains
us, when the soul throws itself down, like a mother upon the green
grave-mound of her child who has slept under it many long years, when no
hope, no desire, disturbs the silence of peaceful resignation,