forever, of course. One morning his face
was sunken and his hands were very, very cold. He was "better," he
whispered, but sadly and faintly. After a while he grew restless and
seemed a little wandering. His mind ran on his classics, and fell back
on the Latin grammar.

"Iris!" he said,--"filiola mea!"--The child knew this meant my dear
little daughter as well as if it had been English.--"Rainbow!" for he
would translate her name at times,--"come to me,--veni"--and his lips
went on automatically, and murmured, "vel venito!"--The child came and
sat by his bedside and took his hand, which she could not warm, but
which shot its rays of cold all through her slender frame. But there she
sat, looking steadily at him. Presently he opened his lips feebly, and
whispered, "Moribundus." She did not know what that meant, but she saw
that there was something new and sad. So she began to cry; but presently
remembering an old book that seemed to comfort him at times, got up and
brought a Bible in the Latin version, called the Vulgate. "Open it," he
said,--"I will read, segnius irritant,--don't put the light out,--ah!
hoeret lateri,--I am going,--vale, vale, vale, goodbye, good-bye,--the
Lord take care of my child! Domine, audi--vel audito!" His face whitened
suddenly, and he lay still, with open eyes and mouth. He had taken his
last degree.

--Little Miss Iris could not be said to begin life with a very brilliant
rainbow over her, in a worldly point of view. A limited wardrobe of
man's attire, such as poor tutors wear,--a few good books, principally
classics,--a print or two, and a plaster model of the Pantheon, with
some pieces of furniture which had seen service,--these, and a child's
heart full of tearful recollections and strange doubts and questions,
alternating with the cheap pleasures which are the anodynes of childish
grief; such were the treasures she inherited.--No,--I forgot. With
that kindly sentiment which all of us feel for old men's first
children,--frost-flowers of the early winter season, the old tutor's
students had remembered him at a time when he was laughing and crying
with his new parental emotions, and running to the side of the plain
crib in which his alter egg, as he used to say, was swinging, to hang
over the little heap of stirring clothes, from which looked the minute,
red, downy, still, round face, with unfixed eyes and working lips,--in
that unearthly gravity which has never yet been broken by a smile, a