pour out his soul to some one who would understand him. He
was like a thirsty land when at last the great rain is descending.

_Mr. B._ I suppose many people would have thought him crazy.

"I suspect the minister did, at first," said Mrs. B.

"And yet I suppose," said I, "he was never more rational. Just think
what it is for a poor sinner all at once to feel that the eternal God is
his; that He will be a God to him! We hear of some people dying at the
receipt of good news; and I have seen some so happy at this experience,
of having a God to love and to love them, that, if the thing itself did
not, as it always does, bring peace and inward strength with it, nature
could not have sustained it."

"Joy unspeakable," said Mr. B. "And full of glory," said his wife,
waiting a moment for him to finish the quotation.

"Now, my dear friends," said I, "that man on horseback, at his
minister's door at midnight, had, at that moment, the first part of what
is meant by the 'Abrahamic covenant.' How little way do these words go
toward expressing the thing itself, and a man's feelings under it! There
was a time when God made Abraham far more happy even than he did you on
your way to the post-office that morning."

Helen came along, just then, with a fruit-basket of apples, and I said
to her, as she was going round with them, "Say again that verse in your
hymn, which has these words in it, 'Thou art mine.'"

So, while Mr. B. was paring his apple, Helen stood before him, and said:

"O, might I hear thy heavenly tongue
But whisper, 'Thou art mine!'
Those gentle words should raise my song
To notes almost divine."

Mr. B. put his apple and knife down, and took his red bandanna
handkerchief from under his plate, and, wiping his eyes, said:

"Hymns always make me feel a good deal, especially Watts's. I've read
that hymn in meeting before the exercises began."

_Pastor._ You know, by happy experience, what it is when that heavenly
tongue whispers, "Thou art mine."

_Mr. B._ I do, sir, if I know anything.

_Pastor._ Now, my dear friends, there is something awaiting you, which
you seem not to have experienced, but which is as good as that.

"We would like to hear about it," they both replied.

"How should you like, Mrs. B.," said I, "to have your little boy become
a sailor?"

"O dear!" said she, "I should have no peace from this time, if I thought
he was to be a sailor."

"But that," said I, "may be God's chos