future life would render us less
willing or able to perform our appropriate duties in the present
condition? Enchanted by a clear view of the heavenly hills, and of our
loved ones beckoning us from the pearl gates of the city of God, could
we patiently work out our life-task here, or make the necessary
exertions to provide for the wants of these bodies whose encumbrance
alone can prevent us from rising to a higher plane of existence?"

"I reckon," said the Skipper, who had been an attentive, although at
times evidently a puzzled, listener, "that it would be with us pretty
much as it was with a crew of French sailors that I once shipped at the
Isle of France for the port of Marseilles. I never had better hands
until we hove in sight of their native country, which they had n't seen
for years. The first look of the land set 'em all crazy; they danced,
laughed, shouted, put on their best clothes; and I had to get new hands
to help me bring the vessel to her moorings."

"Your story is quite to the point, Skipper," said the Doctor. "If
things had been ordered differently, we should all, I fear, be disposed
to quit work and fall into absurdities, like your French sailors, and so
fail of bringing the world fairly into port."

"God's ways are best," said the Elder; "and I don't see as we can do
better than to submit with reverence to the very small part of them
which He has made known to us, and to trust Him like loving and dutiful
children for the rest."

CHAPTER V. THE HILLSIDE.

THE pause which naturally followed the observation of the Elder was
broken abruptly by the Skipper.

"Hillo!" he cried, pointing with the glazed hat with which he had been
fanning himself. "Here away in the northeast. Going down the coast for
better fishing, I guess."

"An eagle, as I live!" exclaimed the Doctor, following with his cane the
direction of the Skipper's hat. "Just see how royally he wheels upward
and onward, his sail-broad wings stretched motionless, save an
occasional flap to keep up his impetus! Look! the circle in which he
moves grows narrower; he is a gray cloud in the sky, a point, a mere
speck or dust-mote. And now he is clean swallowed up in the distance.
The wise man of old did well to confess his ignorance of 'the way of an
eagle in the air.'"

"The eagle," said Elder Staples, "seems to have been a favorite
illustration of the sacred penman. 'They that wait upon the Lord shall
renew their strength; the