p as they neared the Dark River.

It was reached at last. No violent steep, but a gentle and gracious
slope led to the cold waters that had no bitterness for him. Shining
already in the glory of the celestial city, his eyes rested upon the
dear form that had stood by his side through all these years, and with
waning strength he cried, "Stay! Keep as you are! _You_ have been ever
an angel to me: I will draw you." And, summoning his forces, he sketched
his last portrait of the fond and faithful wife. Then, comforting her
with the shortness of their separation, assuring her that he should
always be about her to take care of her, he set his face steadfastly
towards the Beautiful Gate. So joyful was his passage, so triumphant his
march, that the very sight was to them that could behold it as if heaven
itself were come down to meet him. Even the sorrowing wife could but
listen enraptured to the sweet songs he chanted to his Maker's praise;
but, "They are _not_ mine, my beloved!" he tenderly cried; "_No!_ they
are _not_ mine!" The strain he heard was of a higher mood; and
continually sounding as he went, with melodious noise, in notes on high,
he entered in through the gates into the City.

* * * * *

THE FIRST VISIT TO WASHINGTON.

One chill morning in the autumn of 1826, in the town of Keene, New
Hampshire, lights might have been seen at an unusually early hour in the
windows of a yellow one-story-and-a-half house, that stood--and still
stands, perhaps--on the corner of the main street and the Swanzey road.

There was living in that house a blind widow, the mother of a large
family of children, now mostly scattered; and the occasion of the
unseasonable lights was the departure from home of a son yet left to
her, upon a long and uncertain adventure.

He was a young man, eighteen years old, just out of college. Graduating
at Dartmouth, he had brought away from that institution something better
than book-learning,--a deep religious experience, which was to be his
support through trials now quickly to come, and through a subsequent
prosperity more dangerous to the soul than trials. He had been bred a
farmer's boy. He was poor, and had his living to get. And he was now
going out into the world, he scarcely knew whither, to see what prizes
were to be won. In person he was tall, slender, slightly bent; shy and
diffident in his manners; in his appearance a little green and awkward.
He had an im