said my father. "You have
done so much good in every way! You have put your life to such a noble
use!"

The aged master inclined his hoary head for an instant on my father's
shoulder, and pressed my hand.

We entered the station. The train was on the point of starting.

"Farewell, master!" said my father, kissing him on both cheeks.

"Farewell! thanks! farewell!" replied the master, taking one of my
father's hands in his two trembling hands, and pressing it to his heart.

Then I kissed him and felt that his face was bathed in tears. My father
pushed me into the railway carriage, and at the moment of starting he
quickly removed the coarse cane from the schoolmaster's hand, and in its
place he put his own handsome one, with a silver handle and his
initials, saying, "Keep it in memory of me."

The old man tried to return it and to recover his own; but my father was
already inside and had closed the door.

"Farewell, my kind master!"

"Farewell, my son!" responded the master as the train moved off; "and
may God bless you for the consolation which you have afforded to a poor
old man!"

"Until we meet again!" cried my father, in a voice full of emotion.

But the master shook his head, as much as to say, "We shall never see
each other more."

"Yes, yes," repeated my father, "until we meet again!"

And the other replied by raising his trembling hand to heaven, "Up
there!"

And thus he disappeared from our sight, with his hand on high.

CONVALESCENCE.

Thursday, 20th.

Who could have told me, when I returned from that delightful excursion
with my father, that for ten days I should not see the country or the
sky again? I have been very ill--in danger of my life. I have heard my
mother sobbing--I have seen my father very, very pale, gazing intently
at me; and my sister Silvia and my brother talking in a low voice; and
the doctor, with his spectacles, who was there every moment, and who
said things to me that I did not understand. In truth, I have been on
the verge of saying a final farewell to every one. Ah, my poor mother! I
passed three or four days at least, of which I recollect almost nothing,
as though I had been in a dark and perplexing dream. I thought I beheld
at my bedside my kind schoolmistress of the upper primary, who was
trying to stifle her cough in her handkerchief in order not to disturb
me. In the same manner I confusedly recall my master, who bent over to
kiss me, and who pricked my fa