are set down the
transactions of the now dying year. Boys and men, we have our calendar,
mothers and maidens. For example, in your calendar pocket-book, my
good Eliza, what a sad, sad day that is--how fondly and bitterly
remembered--when your boy went off to his regiment, to India, to danger,
to battle perhaps. What a day was that last day at home, when the tall
brother sat yet amongst the family, the little ones round about him
wondering at saddle-boxes, uniforms, sword-cases, gun-cases, and other
wondrous apparatus of war and travel which poured in and filled the
hall; the new dressing-case for the beard not yet grown; the great
sword-case at which little brother Tom looks so admiringly! What a
dinner that was, that last dinner, when little and grown children
assembled together, and all tried to be cheerful! What a night was that
last night, when the young ones were at roost for the last time together
under the same roof, and the mother lay alone in her chamber counting
the fatal hours as they tolled one after another, amidst her tears, her
watching, her fond prayers. What a night that was, and yet how quickly
the melancholy dawn came! Only too soon the sun rose over the houses.
And now in a moment more the city seemed to wake. The house began to
stir. The family gathers together for the last meal. For the last time
in the midst of them the widow kneels amongst her kneeling children, and
falters a prayer in which she commits her dearest, her eldest born,
to the care of the Father of all. O night, what tears you hide--what
prayers you hear! And so the nights pass and the days succeed, until
that one comes when tears and parting shall be no more.

In your diary, as in mine, there are days marked with sadness, not for
this year only, but for all. On a certain day--and the sun perhaps,
shining ever so brightly--the housemother comes down to her family with
a sad face, which scares the children round about in the midst of their
laughter and prattle. They may have forgotten--but she has not--a day
which came, twenty years ago it may be, and which she remembers only too
well: the long night-watch; the dreadful dawning and the rain beating
at the pane; the infant speechless, but moaning in its little crib; and
then the awful calm, the awful smile on the sweet cherub face, when the
cries have ceased, and the little suffering breast heaves no more. Then
the children, as they see their mother's face, remember this was the day
o