came from it. Perhaps she pined for want of more air, shut up in
the rooms all day, not caring to find it in walking or in the fields, or
even in books. Household-work awaited her daily after the factory-work,
and a dark, strange religion oppressed and did not sustain her, Sundays.
So we scarcely wondered when she died. It seemed, indeed, as if she had
died long ago,--as if the life had silently passed away from her,
leaving behind a working body that was glad at last to find a rest it
had never known before.

My other sister was far different. Very much younger, not even a shadow
of the death that had gone before weighed heavily upon her. Everybody
loved her, and her warm, flashing spirit that came out in her sunny
smile. She died in a season of joy, in the first flush of summer. She
died, as the June flowers died, after their happy summer-day of life.

At last I was left alone, to plod the same way, every night and
morning,--out with the sunrise from the skirts of the town, over the
bridge across the stream that fell into our great river which has worked
for us so long, to the tall, grim factory-building where my work awaited
me, and home again at night. I lived on in the house we all of us had
lived in. At first it was alone in the wood. But the town crept out to
meet it, and soon but little woodland was left around it. "Gloomy
Robert" they called me, as I walked back and forth upon the same track,
seldom lifting my head to greet friend or stranger. Though I walked over
well-known ground, my thoughts were wandering in strange romances. My
evening-readings furnished the land I lived in,--seldom this Western
home, but the East, from Homer's time to the days of Haroun Alraschid. I
was so faithful at my work that my responsibilities were each year
increased; and though my brain lived in dreams, I had sufficient use of
it for my little needs each day. I never forgot to answer the wants of
the greedy machines while I was within sound of them; but away from them
I forgot all external sight and sound. I can remember in my boyhood once
I was waked from my reveries. I was walking beneath a high stone-wall,
with my eyes and head bent down as usual, when I was roused by a shower
of rose-buds that fell over my shoulders and folded arms. I heard
laughter, and looked up to see a childish face with sunny, golden curls
tumbling over it; and a surprised voice cried out, "Gloomy Robert is
looking up!" The picture of the face hung in m