ecause I couldn't,--but remember that at any rate I tried honestly
to serve you. I hope God will bless all that set at my table, old and
young, rich and poor, merried and single, and single that hopes soon to
be merried. My husband that's dead and gone always believed that we all
get to heaven sooner or later,--and sence I've grown older and buried so
many that I've loved I've come to feel that perhaps I should meet all of
them that I've known here--or at least as many of 'em as I wanted
to--in a better world. And though I don't calculate there is any
boarding-houses in heaven, I hope I shall some time or other meet them
that has set round my table one year after another, all together, where
there is no fault-finding with the food and no occasion for it,--and if
I do meet them and you there--or anywhere,--if there is anything I can
do for you....

.... Poor dear soul! Her ideas had got a little mixed, and her heart was
overflowing, and the white handkerchief closed the scene with its timely
and greatly needed service.

--What a pity, I have often thought, that she came in just at that
precise moment! For the old Master was on the point of telling us, and
through one of us the reading world,--I mean that fraction of it which
has reached this point of the record,--at any rate, of telling you,
Beloved, through my pen, his solution of a great problem we all have to
deal with. We were some weeks longer together, but he never offered to
continue his reading. At length I ventured to give him a hint that our
young friend and myself would both of us be greatly gratified if he
would begin reading from his unpublished page where he had left off.

--No, sir,--he said,--better not, better not. That which means so much
to me, the writer, might be a disappointment, or at least a puzzle, to
you, the listener. Besides, if you'll take my printed book and be at
the trouble of thinking over what it says, and put that with what you've
heard me say, and then make those comments and reflections which will
be suggested to a mind in so many respects like mine as is your
own,--excuse my good opinion of myself.

(It is a high compliment to me, I replied) you will perhaps find you
have the elements of the formula and its consequences which I was about
to read you. It's quite as well to crack your own filberts as to borrow
the use of other people's teeth. I think we will wait awhile before we
pour out the Elixir Vitae.

--To tell the honest tr