e one must have told
her,' I said, as the hack in which I rode drew up before the door, and I
saw the house was lighted; every window was wide open; and her room,
where I, a child, had learned my woman's lesson, was filled with people.
Solemn, sitting folk; it was not a jubilee at all. 'She is sick,' I
gasped, as my trembling fingers sought the gate latch. No, I saw her
bed, the bed where I had nestled in her arms for eighteen years. It was
white and stiff in its familiar drapings. I tore the gate ajar and
bounded up the steps. My youngest sister met me in the doorway, weeping.
I brushed her aside and passed in among the friendly neighbors who had
hurried out on my arrival. I felt, but scarcely saw them as I said: 'I
want my mother.' Then some one burst in tears and pointed to the open
parlor door. Merciless heaven! resting upon two chairs stood a long,
brown box; a coffin. I gave one shriek, so wild, so full of agony that
not one who heard it stayed to offer the hollow mockery of comfort.
'Merciful God! not my mother?'

"But it was. I never saw her face again. I would not look on it in
death; that face which had been my life. But I love to think I have her
presence with me here, together with her teaching, in my bosom. And with
her help, for the dear dead always help us, I am working out my destiny
after the pattern she set me. It is a _hard_ task; grows harder every
day; but I am young yet, and strong."

Poor child. She did not know the _dangers_ of the road she travelled;
she only knew its hardships. Day after day she toiled, hopeful even in
failure. The bloom left her cheek; but faith still fired her eye. One
day she put away her manuscript, and left the house. The next day she
returned. She had been to ask for her old place in the cabin
schoolhouse. Too late; the place was filled. She sought one of her
mother's friends and asked for work, copying. She returned with white
face and set lip, and a look of horror in her eyes. I understood. God
help the poor, the respectable poor, those starvelings who cannot rise
to independence and cannot sink to vileness. And oh, I prayed, God pity
her,--my Claudia.

I watched her struggles with my own power palsied by that same old
curse, poverty. She did her best; her struggles were torture to me even
when she smiled and met them with sweet faith in her own strength and
God's goodness. She never once murmured, although I knew that many a
night she had gone hungry to her desk, an