A loss in all familiar things,
In flower that blooms, and bird that sings.
And yet, dear heart! remembering thee,
Am I not richer than of old?
Safe in thy immortality,
What change can reach the wealth I hold?
What chance can mar the pearl and gold
Thy love hath left in trust with me?
And while in life's late afternoon,
Where cool and long the shadows grow,
I walk to meet the night that soon
Shall shape and shadow overflow,
I cannot feel that thou art far,
Since near at need the angels are;
And when the sunset gates unbar,
Shall I not see thee waiting stand,
And, white against the evening star,
The welcome of thy beckoning hand?

One more instance of intense friendship between a brother and a
sister and it is one of the most interesting that history reveals to
us shall close this list. Maurice de Guerin was born in Languedoc, in
France, in the year 1811; and there also, in 1839, he died. Although
snatched away at twenty-eight, his fascinating personality and genius
left an indelible impression on all appreciative persons who had come
in contact with him. His writings, few and unelaborate as they are,
have won admiring praise from the judges whose verdict is fame. His
sister Eugenie, six years older than himself, took the place of
mother as well as that of sister to the orphan boy. He was not more
extraordinary for winsomeness and talent than she was for combined
power of intelligence, tenacity of affection, and religiousness of
principle. They became ardent friends, in the most emphatic meaning
of the term. Maurice went to Paris to try his fortune as a writer.
Eugenie's yearning and anxious heart followed him in rapid letters.
She tells him how they whom he has left all love him, encourages him
with virtue and piety, adjures him to be true to his best self. She
says to him, with the irresistible eloquence of the heart, "We see
things with the same eyes: what you find beautiful, I find beautiful.
God has made our souls of one piece." Maurice's replies were shorter
and rarer. It is evident, the reader feels it with a pang of regret,
that Eugenie was much less to Maurice than he was to her; and yet he
loved her well. But man's love is usually poor compared with woman's;
and he was in the throngs of Paris, she in the solitude of a country
home. He fell away from his original purity and constancy, lost his
religious faith for a season, and seemed almost to forget those who
idolized him with such deep fondness. Was h