whether I should not, for everybody's sake, be better
out of the world."

"Oh, Harry, but that was faint-hearted!" said Bessie with a touch of
reproach. "You forgot me, then?"

"I have had several strokes of bad luck lately, or perhaps I ought to
suspect that not being in good case my work was weak. Manuscript after
manuscript has been returned on my hands. Surely this was discouraging.
There on the table is a roll of which I had better hopes, and I found it
awaiting me here."

"May I take it to Fairfield and read it?" Bessie asked. "It is as big as
a book."

"Yes; if it were printed and bound it would be a book. Read it, and let
me know how it impresses you."

Bessie looked mightily glad. "If you will let me help you, Harry, you
will make me happy," said she. "What is it about?"

"It is a story, for your comfort--a true story. I could not devise a
plot, so I fell back on a series of pathetic facts. Life is very sad,
Bessie. Why are we so fond of it?"

"We take it in detail, as we take the hours of the day and the days of
the year, and it is very endurable. It has seemed to me sometimes that
those whom we call fortunate are the least happy, and that the hard lot
is often lifted into the sphere of blessedness. Consider Mr. and Mrs.
Moxon; they appear to have nothing to be thankful for, and yet in their
devotion to one another what perfect peace and consolation!"

"Oh, Bessie, but it is a dreadful fate!" said Harry. "Poor Moxon! who
began life with as fine hopes and as solid grounds for them as any
man,--there he is vegetating at Littlemire still, his mind chiefly taken
up with thinking whether his sick wife will be a little more or a little
less suffering to-day than she was yesterday."

"I saw them last week, and could have envied them. She is as near an
angel as a woman can be; and he was very contented in the garden, giving
lessons to a village boy in whom he has discovered a genius for
mathematics. He talked of nothing else."

"Poor boy! poor genius! And are we to grow after the Moxons' pattern,
Bessie--meek, patient, heavenly?" said Harry.

"By the time our hair is white, Harry, I have no objection, but there is
a long meanwhile," replied Bessie with brave uplooking face. "We have
love between us and about us, and that is the first thing. The best
pleasures are the cheapest--we burden life with too many needless cares.
You may do as much good in an obscure groove of the world as you might
do if your na