hind those
blue and misty hills in the distance."

"Ah! those hills, Cecile. How I have always loved them. To me this has
ever seemed the fairest spot on earth, and the view from this hill just
at sunset the most beautiful I have ever seen. It is ten long years
since my eyes have beheld it, but in my mind I still see it all so
clearly. Tell me it is all there, Cecile, just as it was on that evening
so many, many years ago when I first looked upon its beauties. Your dear
father had just brought me, a happy bride, here to his northern home. We
walked up the hill together to watch the sun set and I thought then I
had never seen a lovelier view: the green fields of waving corn, and
the apple orchards all in blossom, sloping down gradually to the river;
the river itself tumbling and tossing madly over the waterfall far up
there to the left, then swirling and eddying on for a space, only to
grow calm once more quietly, steadily, resume its placid journey to the
ocean. Beyond the river, those wonderful forests, dark, mysterious and
silent. They rise and rise, higher, ever higher, and terminate at last
in the blue and misty hills of which you were just speaking. I love it
all, Cecile, and I could not bear to think that any part of it had
changed with the advancing years. Tell me it is just the same; tell me
it is all there as it was so long ago."

"Yes, mother dear," answered the younger woman, "it is all there just as
it has ever been; the fields and the river, the forests and the hills
beyond."

Cecile neglected to mention that the fields were now mere barren stubble
and that the river was visible only here and there as it peeped through
between the many buildings lining its banks; immense buildings of
factory and mill, smaller structures, cottages and tenement houses
occupied by the workers in factory and mill. She supposed the forests
were still there but the day had been very sultry with scarce a breath
of air stirring and a heavy pall of smoke from the huge chimneys hung
over the valley, hiding everything which lay beyond. Only the tops of
the distant hills rose in triumph above it.

"I am glad to think it is all unchanged," said the mother with a sigh of
content. "I know it is foolish to feel as I do about it, but it would be
a real grief to me to think that my beautiful valley had been sacrificed
to the need or the greed of advancing civilization."

"God has been very good to me, Cecile, and I thank Him with all my