CLARA LAWTON.

"Well, dear," said Mrs. Lawton to her daughter Clara, "the home you will
enter to-morrow as a bride is very different from the home that I
entered as your father's bride. Our home was a log cabin in the Michigan
woods, with only an acre of clearing, where the growing season is only
about four months long and the winter eight. Snow lay on the ground six
months of the year, from one to three feet deep. In our cabin, we had
the bare necessaries and your father had to work very hard cutting
cord-wood for a living; but we were very happy, for we had love and
health; and need I say, dear, what a joy it was to us when you entered
our cabin as a passenger on the journey of life.

"My wish for you now is, that you may find as much happiness in the
companionship of Charles Herne as I have had in your father's, and as
much joy in the advent of a little one in your home as I did in you."

"You have always been one of the kindest and best mothers a girl ever
had," said Clara, warmly.

"I have tried to be," said Mrs. Lawton, simply.

Clara Lawton was twenty-two years of age, prepossessing in appearance,
with a bright, happy expression. Her nature was deep and affectionate,
her tastes domestic and social. When she was twenty, Mr. and Mrs. Lawton
had moved to California and settled in the pretty little city of
Roseland, which nestled in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas.

At a camping party Clara had first met Charles Herne, and the outcome of
that meeting was that to-morrow would be Clara's wedding day.

Who can describe the thoughts that filled the mind of Clara the night
previous to her marriage? Who, indeed, can describe the thoughts that
fill the mind of any maiden as she lays her head on her pillow the night
previous to her marriage?

All her life she had been taught to consider this the most important
event of her life, the acme of happiness, the end and aim of her
womanhood. The thought of her own little world and the decrees of the
great world at large alike hold her to that belief. That she is a soul
in process of development; that marriage is only one step towards
something higher; that the true union is the joining of hands to work
for humanity, are doctrines which would sound strange in her ears. She
feels that great change that is coming into her life, and her thoughts
are in accordance with her character and circumstances. One bride may be
filled with the sadness of unwilling acquiescence, ano