is direct agents
for cursing the man."

"Neither are we," said Louis, "and if we obey the commandment, 'Love ye
one another,' where can the curse come? No, no, Mrs. Patten, we must
wait for the spirit of the man to grow good and true, and the weakness
of the flesh by this will be overcome; he cannot forget all the wrong,
and probably might recall the words, 'The spirit is willing but the
flesh is weak.'"

"Well," said Aunt Hildy, "I 'spose that's the Gospel good and true, but
I do get riled at his cuttings up. I've seen 'em before, yes I've seen
'em before."

And she sat as if feeling her way back through the mist of years. I
wondered what she had suffered, but she kept her own secrets close to
her heart and held steadfastly to the truth doing much good. Her busy
fingers through the long winter evenings kept adding to the store of
stockings she was knitting for somebody who needed--and the needy would
surely come in her path.

Aunt Peg and Matthias were quietly happy, and they came out of church
every Sabbath and walked with a pleasant dignity homeward. Matthias had
memorized the old hymns and he could pick many of them out, having
learned to designate them by their first word or line, and this he
called reading.

"'Pears like I kin read a few himes, Miss Emily," he said. This is the
way with us through life. It seems to me we get the first word or line
and then go blindly on making mistakes and grievously sinning in our
ignorance, unknowing of the great beauty that awaits us in the perfect
rendering of life's beautiful psalm.

Clara said we were like children running through a meadow, trampling the
daisies and clovers under our feet, and with breathless impatience
hurrying on through the long day to the fall of night, and when the
sunset of our earthly life came on, pausing then at the corner of the
meadow, we gathered the few tired blossoms at our feet and passed out
into the unknown.

"Oh, my Emily!" she said, "if our steps could be even and slow we should
pick our comfort-daisies and our love-clovers on either side, while our
feet still kept the one small path of our greatest duty; and this to me
is the straight and narrow path spoken of."

Her types of thought were so purely beautiful, and yet she drew them
from the plainest facts. She was growing nearer heaven daily, or perhaps
we were seeing her soul more clearly through the days. I thought and
comforted myself that we should not lose her.

Louis and