ere is a unity
which all faithful labor, through whatever jars, consults and creates.
Of all criticisms the resultant is truth; be the conflicts what they
may, the issue shall be peace; and one music of affection is yet
angelically to flow from the many divided notes of human life. Who is
the _minister_, then? No ordained functionary alone, but every man or
woman that has lived and served, loved and lamented, and now, for such
ends, suffers and hopes.

THE GHOST OF LITTLE JACQUES.

How quiet the saloon was, that morning, as I groped my way through the
little white tables, the light chairs, and the dimness of early dawn
to the windows. It was my business to open the windows every morning,
finding my way down as best I could; for it was not permitted to light
the gas at that hour, and no candles were allowed, lest they should
soil the furniture. This morning the glass dome which brightened the
ceiling, and helped to lighten the saloon, was of very little effect,
so cloudy and dusk was the sky. The high houses which shut in the
strip of garden on all sides reflected not a ray of light. A
chill struck through me, as I passed along the marble pavement; a
saloon-dampness, empty, vault-like, hung about the fireless, sunless
place; and the plashing of the fountain which dripped into the marble
basin beyond--dropping, dropping, incessantly--struck upon my ear like
water trickling down the side of a cave.

It had never occurred to me to think the place lonely or dreary
before, or to demur at this morning operation of opening it for the
day; a tawdry, gilded, showy hall, it had seemed to me quite a grand
affair, compared with those in which I had hitherto found employment.
Now I shuddered and shivered, and felt the task, always regarded as a
compliment to my honesty, to be indeed hard and heavy enough.

It might have been--yet I was not a coward--that the little coffin
in that little room at the end of the saloon had something to do with
this uneasiness. On each side of that narrow room (which opened upon a
long hall leading to the front of the building) were the small windows
looking out upon the garden, which I always unbolted first. I say I
do not know that this presence of death had anything to do with my
trepidation. The death of a child was no very solemn or very uncommon
thing in my master's family. He had many children, and, when death
thinned their ranks, took the loss like a philosopher,--as he was,--a
Frenc