rammatical,
inelegant, and long. A quiet talk with God, manly in its straightforward
confession of short-comings, childlike in its appeal for guidance,
fervent in its gratitude for all good gifts, and the crowning one of
loving children. As if close intercourse had made the two familiar, this
human father turned to the Divine, as these sons and daughters turned to
him, as free to ask, as confident of a reply, as all afflictions,
blessings, cares, and crosses, were laid down before him, and the work
of eighty years submitted to his hand. There were no sounds in the room
but the one voice often tremulous with emotion and with age, the coo of
some dreaming baby, or the low sob of some mother whose arms were empty,
as the old man stood there, rugged and white atop as the granite hills,
with the old wife at his side, a circle of sons and daughters girdling
them round, and in all hearts the thought that as the former wedding had
been made for time, this golden one at eighty must be for eternity.

While Sylvia looked and listened a sense of genuine devotion stole over
her; the beauty and the worth of prayer grew clear to her through the
earnest speech of that unlettered man, and for the first time she fully
felt the nearness and the dearness of the Universal Father, whom she had
been taught to fear, yet longed to love.

"Now, my children, you must go before the little folks are tuckered
out," said Grandpa, heartily. "Mother and me can't say enough toe thank
you for the presents you have fetched us, the dutiful wishes you have
give us, the pride and comfort you have allers ben toe us. I ain't no
hand at speeches, so I shan't make none, but jest say ef any 'fliction
falls on any on you, remember mother's here toe help you bear it; ef any
worldly loss comes toe you, remember father's house is yourn while it
stans, and so the Lord bless and keep us all."

"Three cheers for gramper and grammer!" roared a six-foot scion as a
safety valve for sundry unmasculine emotions, and three rousing hurras
made the rafters ring, struck terror to the heart of the oldest
inhabitant of the rat-haunted garret, and summarily woke all the babies.

Then the good-byes began, the flurry of wrong baskets, pails and bundles
in wrong places; the sorting out of small folk too sleepy to know or
care what became of them; the maternal cluckings, and paternal shouts
for Kitty, Cy, Ben, Bill, or Mary Ann; the piling into vehicles with
much ramping of indignan