eous trimming of pink "lute-string" ribbon, which has faded
into ashes of roses at the touch of the kindly years.

From the trunk comes a musty fragrance--lavender, sweet clover,
rosemary, thyme, and the dried petals of roses that have long since
crumbled to dust. Scraps of brocade and taffeta, yellowed lingerie,
and a quaint old wedding gown, daguerreotypes in ornate cases, and
then the letters, tied with faded ribbon, in a package by themselves.

The fingers unconsciously soften to their task, for the letters are
old and yellow, and the ink has faded to brown. Every one was cut open
with the scissors, not hastily torn according to our modern fashion,
but in a slow and seemly manner, as befits a solemn occasion.

Perhaps the sweet face of a great-grandmother grew much perplexed at
the sight of a letter in an unfamiliar hand, and perhaps, too, as is
the way of womankind, she studied the outside a long time before she
opened it. As the months passed by, the handwriting became familiar,
but a coquettish grandmother may have flirted a bit with the letter,
and put it aside--until she could be alone.

All the important letters are in the package, from the first formal
note asking permission to call, which a womanly instinct bade the
maiden put aside, to the last letter, written when twilight lay upon
the long road they had travelled together, but still beginning: "My
Dear and Honoured Wife."

Bits of rosemary and geranium, lemon verbena, tuberose, and
heliotrope, fragile and whitened, but still sweet, fall from the
opened letters and rustle softly as they fall.

Far away in the "peace which passeth all understanding," the writer of
the letters sleeps, but the old love keeps a fragrance that outlives
the heart in which it bloomed.

At night, when the fires below are lighted, and childish voices make
the old house ring with laughter, Memory steals into the attic to sing
softly of the past, as a mother croons her child to sleep.

Rocking in a quaint old attic chair, with the dear familiar things of
home gathered all about her, Memory's voice is sweet, like a harp
tuned in the minor mode when the south wind sweeps the strings.

Bunches of herbs swing from the rafters and fill the room with the
wholesome scent of an old-fashioned garden, where rue and heartsease
grew. With the fragrance comes the breath from that garden of
Mnemosyne, where the simples for heartache nod beside the River of
Forgetfulness.

In a flash th