he was tired. There she lay in her flowing white
drapery, with her hands generally folded. Her face was so pale and yet
so mild, and her eyes so deep and unfathomable, that I often stood
before her lost in thought and looked upon her and asked myself if she
was not one of the "strange people" also. Many a time she placed her
hand upon my head and then it seemed to me that a thrill ran through
all my limbs and that I could not move or speak, but must forever gaze
into her deep, unfathomable eyes. She conversed very little with us,
but watched our sports, and when at times we grew very noisy and
quarrelsome, she did not complain but held her white hands over her
brow and closed her eyes as if sleeping. But there were days when she
said she felt better, and on such days she sat up on her couch,
conversed with us and told us curious stories. I do not know how old
she was at that time. She was so helpless that she seemed like a
child, and yet was so serious and silent that she could not have been
one. When people alluded to her they involuntarily spoke gently and
softly. They called her "the angel," and I never heard anything said
of her that was not good and lovely. Often when I saw her lying so
silent and helpless, and thought that she would never walk again in
life, that there was for her neither work nor joy, that they would
carry her here and there upon her couch until they laid her upon her
eternal bed of rest, I asked myself why she had been sent into this
world, when she could have rested so gently on the bosom of the angels
and they could have borne her through the air on their white wings, as
I had seen in some sacred pictures. Again I felt as if I must take a
part of her burden, so that she need not carry it alone, but we with
her. I could not tell her all this for I knew it was not proper. I
had an indefinable feeling. It was not a desire to embrace her. No
one could have done that, for it would have wronged her. It seemed to
me as if I could pray from the very bottom of my heart that she might
be released from her burden.

One warm spring day she was brought into our room. She looked
exceedingly pale; but her eyes were deeper and brighter than ever, and
she sat upon her couch and called us to her. "It is my birth-day,"
said she, "and I was confirmed early this morning. Now, it is
possible," she continued as she looked upon her father with a smile,
"that God may soon call me to him, although I