ked
upon life and love and joy instead of death, as helplessly as a flower
looks toward the sun. They were happy, although half-ashamed of their
happiness; but, after all, perhaps, being happy after bereavement and
trouble means simply that the soul has turned to God for consolation.

James's face was beaming with his joyful thoughts as he drew up before
the village store, got out of the buggy, and tied the horse. When he
entered he said "good morning!" in a sort of general fashion. There were
many men lounging about. The morning mail had been distributed, and
although Alton people got very few letters, still there was a wide
interest in the post office, a little boxed-off space in a corner of the
store. The store-keeper, Henry Graves, was the postmaster. He felt the
importance of his position. When he sorted and distributed the mail from
the limp leather bag, he realized himself as an official of a great
republic. He loved to proudly ignore, and not even seem to see, the
interested and gaping faces watching the boxes. Doctor Gordon's box was
an object of especial interest. Indeed, that was the only one to be
depended upon to contain something when the two mails per day arrived.
Gordon, moreover, took the only New York paper which reached the little
hamlet. Alton had no paper of its own. The nearest was printed in
Stanbridge. One man, the Presbyterian minister, subscribed to the
Stanbridge paper, and paid for it in farm produce. He had a little farm,
and tilled the soil when he was not saving souls. The Stanbridge paper
had arrived the night before, and the minister had been good enough to
impart some of its contents to the curious throng in the store. He was
accustomed to do so. Likewise Gordon, when he was not too hurried,
would open his New York paper, and read the most startling "headers" to
a wide-eyed audience. This morning the paper was in the box as usual,
with a number of letters. The men pressed in a suggestive way around
James, as he took the parcel from the postmaster. There were no
lock-boxes. James hesitated a moment. He had not much time, but he was
good-natured, and the eager hunger in the men's eyes appealed to him.
There was something pathetic about this outreaching for intelligence of
their kind, and its progress or otherwise, among these plodding folk,
who had so to count their pence that a newspaper was an unheard-of
luxury to them.

James opened the paper and glanced over the headlines on the firs