t there was no voice commanding, "let
him alone." She rocked him in her arms a long time after he had fallen
asleep. Her tears sparkled upon his jet curls, while her heart was heavy
as lead in her bosom.

"Am I, then, so unlovely that my husband does not care for me? Once I
thought it was so beautiful to love, and to be loved! His love is gone;
and mine--O my God, let me not lose the last particle of love for the
one I must live with until 'death do us part.' We might be so happy, but
are so miserable! Is it my fault? My conscience is clear; it does not
accuse me. He is so unhappy, so morose; he makes us all so wretched,
when life ought to be so pleasant."

Althea had placed her low rocker upon the verandah. A gentle breeze
stirred the vines that wreathed the pillars. The birds flew hither and
thither upon boughs that shaded her cottage. The fragrance of flowers
filled the air.

"How beautiful is all this visible world," exclaimed she. "How full
should it be of enjoyment." "Yes, yes," chirped the birds, the breeze
and the flowers.

She laid down her child, who still slept heavily. She gazed at him
intently, resolutely banishing unwelcome thoughts of aught that should
harm him.

The house was in confusion, as it ever is after a hurried departure.
Althea busied herself with setting things straight. Then she sat down to
her piano, and commenced a song; but her voice trembled too much. She
changed into a favorite march, whose notes rose and fell like the
storm-tossed billows of the sea. Battles, quadrilles, waltzes dropped
from her finger-ends, as if they had been magicians, and so mingled,
dislocated and inharmonious, as to make wildest, though still musical
confusion.

Hand-weary, but heart-lightened, she took up a book. It was a new book,
she had but half-read, "Gates Ajar." She came to the child eating her
ginger snaps in Heaven; to the musician playing favorite airs upon the
piano, to the dress-maker fashioning gossamer garments out of aerial
fabrics, etc., etc. She put by the book.

"I do not like that kind of a Heaven. How could an authoress make a
Heaven out of the lowest part of earth? To think of eating, darning and
mending up there! We are to do in perfection there, what we most like to
do here! The drunkard then will take his glass; but he does not go to
Heaven. Wonder if the tobacco chewer enters through the pearly
gates--'nothing that defileth or maketh a lie'--ah, how beautiful and
charming Heaven m