nd along the road
and gradually grow vague and spectral in the falling snow, and presently
disappear. Jean was gone out of my life, and would not come back any
more. Jervis, the cousin she had played with when they were babies
together--he and her beloved old Katy--were conducting her to her
distant childhood home, where she will lie by her mother's side once
more, in the company of Susy and Langdon.

DECEMBER 26TH. The dog came to see me at eight o'clock this morning.
He was very affectionate, poor orphan! My room will be his quarters
hereafter.

The storm raged all night. It has raged all the morning. The snow drives
across the landscape in vast clouds, superb, sublime--and Jean not here
to see.

2:30 P.M.--It is the time appointed. The funeral has begun. Four hundred
miles away, but I can see it all, just as if I were there. The scene
is the library in the Langdon homestead. Jean's coffin stands where her
mother and I stood, forty years ago, and were married; and where Susy's
coffin stood thirteen years ago; where her mother's stood five years and
a half ago; and where mine will stand after a little time.

FIVE O'CLOCK.--It is all over.

When Clara went away two weeks ago to live in Europe, it was hard, but I
could bear it, for I had Jean left. I said WE would be a family. We said
we would be close comrades and happy--just we two. That fair dream was
in my mind when Jean met me at the steamer last Monday; it was in my
mind when she received me at the door last Tuesday evening. We were
together; WE WERE A FAMILY! the dream had come true--oh, precisely true,
contentedly, true, satisfyingly true! and remained true two whole days.

And now? Now Jean is in her grave!

In the grave--if I can believe it. God rest her sweet spirit!

1. Katy Leary, who had been in the service of the Clemens
family for twenty-nine years.

2. Mr. Gabrilowitsch had been operated on for appendicitis.

THE TURNING-POINT OF MY LIFE

I

If I understand the idea, the BAZAR invites several of us to write upon
the above text. It means the change in my life's course which introduced
what must be regarded by me as the most IMPORTANT condition of my
career. But it also implies--without intention, perhaps--that that
turning-point ITSELF was the creator of the new condition. This gives it
too much distinction, too much prominence, too much credit. It is only
the LAST link in a very long chain of turning-points commiss