_Ecclesiae Graecae Monumenta._

Dim voices haunt me from the past--for the dream of life is dreamed, and
may now be revealed; the dreamer is loitering on the Bier Path leading
to the green grass mounds, whence mouldering hands seem to point upward
and say, "Look thy last on the blue skies, and come rest with us."

I have no happy childhood to recall; for I began to think so early, that
pain and thought are linked together. I had a father, and a sister two
years my senior; and our home was a small cottage, surrounded by a
flower-garden, on the outskirts of a town, where the chime of
church-bells was distinctly heard. These are sweet, romantic
associations; but "garden flowers," and "silvery chimes," and
"childhood's home," are words which awaken no answering chord in my
heart--for Reality was stern, and Fancy wove no fabric of fairy texture
wherewith to cover the naked truth.

My mother died when I was born; and my father was a thin, pale man,
always wrapped in flannels about the head and throat, and moving slowly
with the aid of a stick. He never breakfasted with us--we were kept in
the kitchen, to save firing--but he came down late in the forenoon, and
when it was warm and sunshiny he would take a gentle stroll into the
fields, never townward. We dined at a late hour, and there were always
delicacies for my father; and after dinner he sat over his wine, smoking
cigars and reading the newspapers, till it was time to go to bed. He
took little notice of Gabrielle or me, except to command silence, or to
send us for any thing he wanted. There were two parlors in the cottage,
one at each side of the door; the furniture was scanty and mean, and the
parlor on the left-hand side never had a fire in it, for my father
always inhabited the other. It was bitter cold for Gabrielle and me in
this left-hand room during the winter, for we were often turned in there
to amuse ourselves; our sole domestic--an ancient Irish servitor,
retained by my father solely on account of her culinary
accomplishments--never admitted us poor shivering girls into the kitchen
when she was cooking, for, said Nelly,

"If I am teased or narvous I shall, maybe, spoil the dinner, and then
our Lady save us from the masther's growl."

No one ever came near us--we seemed utterly neglected, and our very
existence unknown. The house was redolent with the fumes of tobacco, and
the garden where we played was a wilderness of weeds, amon