play, there are comparatively few who carry banners, who disport the
epaulette, and the gold lace. And sometimes, we who help swell the
ranks of those who watch and wait, grow discouraged, almost thinking
that life is a failure because it holds no gala-day for us, nothing but
sober tints and quiet duties. What chance for any one, and a woman
especially, to make a career for herself, tied down to a lot of
precious babies, or lassooed by ten thousand galloping cares! As well
expect a rose to blossom in midwinter hedges, or a lark to sing in a
snowstorm, as to look for bloom and song in such a life! But just bend
down your ear a minute, poor, tired, overworked and troubled sister, I
have a special word for you. It is simply impossible for circumstances
of any sort to overthrow the high spirit of one who believes in
something yet to come and out of sight. What are poverty and adverse
fate and mocking hopes and disappointed ambition to the soul which is
only journeying through an unfriendly world to a heritage that cannot
fail? As well might a flower complain of the rains that called it from
the sod, of the winds that rocked it, and the cloudless noons that
flamed above it, when June at last has lightly laid the coronal of
summer's perfect bloom upon its bending bough. We shall find our June
somewhere, never fear. Be content then a little longer with
uncongenial surroundings and a life that knows no outlook of hope. Be
all the sweeter and the stronger and the braver that the way is short.
To-morrow, in the Palace of Love, the dark and unfriendly inn that
sheltered us for a night upon the way, shall be forgotten.

V.

SHUT IN.

Were you ever shut in by a fog? Lost at mid-day in a soundless,
rayless world of nebulous vapor--so seemingly alone in the universe
that your voice found no echo, and your ears caught no footfall in all
the vast domain of silence about you? The other morning, when I left
the house, I paused in wonderment at the strange world into which I was
about to plunge. All landmarks were gone, nothing but silver and gray
left of nature's brilliant tints, not even so much shadow as an artist
might use to accentuate a bird's wing in crayon--no heaven above, no
earth beneath. The interior of a raised biscuit could not have been
more densely uniform than the atmosphere. It seemed as if the world
had slipped its moorings and drifted off its course into companionless
space, leaving me behind, as