vacant chair in this family circle, or that from some neighbor's family
a child has gone. Fear clutches at the youthful hearts and Grief
shudders behind each chair. Even the warm bed in the dark room is a
dread, for we have so surrounded death with mystery and terror that even
the young are aghast when it is mentioned. But our best-loved poet has a
cheering message for every one, and into this little group the parent
brings it. In soft and sympathetic voice he reads aloud, giving the slow
and gentle music of the lines time to steal into the youthful hearts.

As he reads, he pauses now and then to speak to his little audience,
watching ever not to be sharp in his questionings or anything but kindly
in his comments. Something like the following might be the way he brings
out the meaning:

"'There is a Reaper, whose name is Death,
And, with his sickle keen,
He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,
And the flowers that grow between.'

"A _Reaper_--a man walking in the grain, cutting it as he goes. Not with
a machine such as we see on the farm nowadays, but with a short curved
blade which the poet calls a sickle. It is a _keen_ blade the sickle
has, and with every stroke ripened grain and all the little flowers that
have grown up among it fall to the ground. But the poet means more. He
thinks that the Reaper is Death, that the _bearded grain_ is the men and
women who have lived to a ripe old age and who are ready to die, ready
for the rewards of a long and well-spent life. But alas, the _flowers_
fall with the ripened grain: sometimes little children must die,
although dearly would we like to keep them with us.

"Then the Reaper speaks: 'Shall I have nothing fair and beautiful, must
I have nothing but dry and bearded grain? I love these beautiful
flowers; their fragrance is dear to me. Yet I will give them back again;
some time you may see them again.'

"So Death looked at the little children with tears filling his kindly
eyes. As they faded and drooped he kissed them gently and took them
softly and sorrowfully into his arms. He was gathering these lovely
innocents to take them to his Lord, where in Paradise they might be
happy evermore, without any of the privations and sufferings that come
to every one who grows up.

"As he wept, not for the little children, but for all who stay behind,
he continued to speak smilingly through his tears to the sorrowing ones
on earth:

"'Christ needs these