"

I must not try to tell you the story of Alice's fortunes, or Sarah's.
Every day of their lives was a romance, as is every day of yours and
mine. Every day was a love-story, as may be every day of yours and
mine, if we will make it so. As they all grew older their homes were all
somewhat parted. The boys became men and married. The girls became women
and married. George never pulled down the old farm-house, not even when
he and Mr. Vaux built the beautiful house that stands next to it to-day.
He put trellises on the sides of it. He trained cotoneaster and Roxbury
wax-work over it. He carved a cross himself, and fastened it in the
gable. Above the door, as you went in, was a picture of Mary Mother and
her Child, with this inscription:--

"Holy cell and holy shrine,
For the Maid and Child divine!
Remember, thou that seest her bending
O'er that babe upon her knee,
All heaven is ever thus extending
Its arms of love round thee.
Such love shall bless our arched porch;
Crowned with his cross, our cot becomes a church."

And in that little church he gathered the boys and girls of the
neighborhood every Sunday afternoon, and told them stories and they sang
together. And on the week days he got up children's parties there, which
all the children thought rather the best experiences of the week, and
he and his wife and his own children grew to think the hours in the
cabin the best hours of all. There were pictures on the walls; they
painted the windows themselves with flower-pictures, and illuminated
them with colored leaves. But there were but two inscriptions. These
were over the inside of the two doors, and both inscriptions were the
same,--"Love is the whole."

They told all these stories, and a hundred more, at a great Thanksgiving
party after the war. Walter and his wife and his children came from
Sangamon County; and the General and all his family came down from
Winetka; and Fanny and the Governor and all their seven came all the way
from Minnesota; and Alice and her husband and all her little ones came
up the river, and so across from Quincy; and Sarah and Gilbert, with the
twins and the babies, came in their own carriage all the way from
Horace. So there was a Thanksgiving dinner set for all the six, and the
six husbands and wives, and the twenty-seven children. In twenty years,
since their father died, those brothers and sisters had lived for each
other. They had ha