enderly as in the olden days, with the great strength of his
undying love, he gathered me in silence to his heart. How many nights I
passed to the land of dreams thinking, "Oh, if my Louis should die!"

Father and mother were enjoying life, and when Aunt Phebe came to see
us, bringing a wee bit of a blue-eyed daughter, she said, "If I should
have to leave her, I should die with the knowledge that she would find a
home among you here."

"I don't see why we haint thought out sooner," said Aunt Hildy; "you see
folks are ready, waitin', only they don't know whar to begin such work,
and now there's Jane North, I'll be bound she'd a gone deeper and deeper
into tattlin', ef the right one hadn't teched her in a tender spot, and
now she's jest sot her heart into the work, and as true as you live,
she's growin' handsome in doin' it. I'm ashamed of myself to think I
have wasted so much time. Oh, ef I'd got my eyes open thirty years ago."

"Better late than never," said Aunt Phebe; "live and learn; it takes one
life to teach us how to prize it, but the days to come will be full of
fruit to our children, I hope."

"Wall ef we sow the wind we reap the whirlwind sure, Miss Dayton."

Aunt Phebe was very desirous that John should see Mr. Dayton, which he
did, and an offer to study with him the higher mathematics was gladly
accepted, and between these two men sprang a friendship which was
enduring.

Uncle Dayton had helped many a one through the tangled maze of Euclid
problems and their like, and when John walked along by his side in ease
and pleasure, Mr. Dayton was delighted; and when he came to see us, he
said:

"The fellow is a man, he's a man clear through.

"Why," said he, "I was just the one to carry him along all right. I was
the first man to take a colored boy into a private school, and I did it
under protest, losing some of the white boys, whose parents would not
let them stay; not much of a loss either," he added, "though they
behaved nearly as well as the colored boys I took. I belonged at the
time to the Baptist Church; the colored woman, whose two sons I received
into my school, was a member of the same church; three boys, whose
parents were my brothers and sisters in the faith, were withdrawn, and
the minister who had baptized us all, and declared us to be one in the
name of the humble Nazarene, also withdrew his son from my school, being
unwilling to have him recite in the class with these two boys, whose
skin wa