one
of our wedding gifts. These things had become commonplace to us--until
the baby began to notice them! Night after night, I would take her in my
arms and show her the sheep in one of the pictures, and talk to her
about them, and she would coo delightedly. The trinkets on the
mantelpiece became dearer to us because she loved to handle them. The
home was being sanctified by her presence. We had come into a new realm
of happiness.

But a home cannot be builded always on happiness. We were to learn that
through bitter experience. We had seen white crepe on other doors,
without ever thinking that some day it might flutter on our own. We had
witnessed sorrow, but had never suffered it. Our home had welcomed many
a gay and smiling visitor; but there was a grim and sinister one to
come, against whom no door can be barred.

After thirteen months of perfect happiness, its planning and dreaming,
the baby was taken from us.

The blow fell without warning. I left home that morning, with Mother and
the baby waving their usual farewells to me from the window. Early that
afternoon, contrary to my usual custom, I decided to go home in advance
of my regular time. I had no reason for doing this, aside from a strange
unwillingness to continue at work. I recalled later that I cleaned up my
desk and put away a number of things, as though I were going away for
some time. I never before had done that, and nothing had occurred which
might make me think I should not be back at my desk as usual.

When I reached home the baby was suffering from a slight fever, and
Mother already had called the doctor in. He diagnosed it as only a
slight disturbance. During dinner, I thought baby's breathing was not as
regular as it should be, and I summoned the doctor immediately. Her
condition grew rapidly worse, and a second physician was called; but it
was not in human skill to save her. At eleven o'clock that night she was
taken from us.

It is needless to dwell here upon the agony of that first dark time
through which we passed. That such a blow could leave loveliness in its
path, and add a touch of beauty to our dwelling place, seemed
unbelievable at the time. Yet to-day our first baby still lives with us,
as wonderful as she was in those glad thirteen months. She has not grown
older, as have we, but smiles that same sweet baby smile of hers upon us
as of old. We can talk of her now bravely and proudly; and we have come
to understand that it was a p