so swift that the "America's Cup" has
remained in our keeping all these years.

Will we presently utter the old cry of the wise man who "gat him
everything," "that all is vanity"?

When the children are asleep the little grandmother goes down to her
son's study. He is not ambitious for show or wealth, but he has a rather
luxurious side. The rugs are soft; the chairs are easy, the library is
filled with choice books. Sometimes she sits and reads, and brave old
Thackeray is one of her favourites. It is as her lover said,--it takes
years and experience to see all the tender, hidden mysteries of his best
speech.

Then she puts aside her book, and he his work, and they talk. "What your
father said" and "your father thought this way," always has a charm for
him, and he misses his father more than any one can imagine. He knows
about the trip to Germany, and the visit to grandfather, with Paris at
its highest estate and the beautiful Empress Eugenie. And London with
its Queen, who has reigned sixty years, and who, like his mother, has
made part of the pilgrimage with a great sorrow buried in her heart.
Some day he is going over it all; but he will not see the handsome,
golden-haired empress, who is but a pale, sorrowful ghost, and perhaps
not the Queen. He would go to-morrow, if he could take the little
mother.

They talk, too, of the future. There have been fifty magical years when
you look back,--years of discovery, of perfection in art and invention,
of nations making rapid strides, of Africa illumined by explorers, of
Japan coming to the front when hardly fifty years have elapsed since she
first opened her gates to strangers.

And of the great City that has gathered the little towns of children who
went out from her again in her arms,--will she be beautiful and grand
and wise, and a power among men and cities? She has gathered heroes,
living and dead, in her bosom, and for the greatest of all reared a
marble temple. Oh, what will she be in fifty more years?

"You may live to see it," the little mother says, and smiles.

For herself there is the other country, and the loves she holds most
dear. And because they go, when the worst sorrow is spent, one knows
they will be found again, and that immortality is no myth, but the crown
and seal of God's love to human love.

THE END

* * * * *

The "Little Girl" Series

By AMANDA M. DOUGLAS

In Handsome Cloth Binding

A Little Girl