welcome guest in every home. Soon
after Iola's marriage, Robert sold out his business and moved with his
mother and sister to North Carolina. He bought a large plantation near
C----, which he divided into small homesteads, and sold to poor but
thrifty laborers, and his heart has been gladdened by their increased
prosperity and progress. He has seen the one-roomed cabins change to
comfortable cottages, in which cleanliness and order have supplanted the
prolific causes of disease and death. Kind and generous, he often
remembers Mrs. Johnson and sends her timely aid.

Marie's pale, spiritual face still bears traces of the beauty which was
her youthful dower, but its bloom has been succeeded by an air of
sweetness and dignity. Though frail in health, she is always ready to
lend a helping hand wherever and whenever she can.

Grandmother Johnson was glad to return South and spend the remnant of
her days with the remaining friends of her early life. Although feeble,
she is in full sympathy with her children for the uplifting of the race.
Marie and her mother are enjoying their aftermath of life, one by
rendering to others all the service in her power, while the other, with
her face turned toward the celestial city, is

"Only waiting till the angels
Open wide the mystic gate."

The shadows have been lifted from all their lives; and peace, like
bright dew, has descended upon their paths. Blessed themselves, their
lives are a blessing to others.

NOTE.

From threads of fact and fiction I have woven a story whose mission will
not be in vain if it awaken in the hearts of our countrymen a stronger
sense of justice and a more Christlike humanity in behalf of those whom
the fortunes of war threw, homeless, ignorant and poor, upon the
threshold of a new era. Nor will it be in vain if it inspire the
children of those upon whose brows God has poured the chrism of that new
era to determine that they will embrace every opportunity, develop every
faculty, and use every power God has given them to rise in the scale of
character and condition, and to add their quota of good citizenship to
the best welfare of the nation. There are scattered among us materials
for mournful tragedies and mirth-provoking comedies, which some hand may
yet bring into the literature of the country, glowing with the fervor of
the tropics and enriched by the luxuriance of the Orient, and thus add
to the solution of our unsolved American problem