ober, with
yellow leaves and swart shadows; December, palaced in snow, and idly
whistling through his numb fingers;-all have their various charm; and in
the rose-bowers of summer, and as we spread our hands before the torches
of winter, we say joyfully, "Thou hast made all things beautiful in
their time." We sit around the fireside, and the angel feared and
dreaded by us all comes in, and one is taken from our midst. Hands that
have caressed us, locks that have fallen over us like a bath of beauty,
are hidden beneath shroud-folds. We see the steep edges of the grave,
and hear the heavy rumble of the clods; and, in the burst of passionate
grief, it seems that we can never still the crying of our hearts. But
the days rise and set, dimly at first, and seasons come and go, and,
by little and little, the weight rises from the heart, and the shadows
drift from before the eyes, till we feel again the spirit of gladness,
and see again the old beauty of the world.

* * * * *

=_Donald G. Mitchell, 1822-._= (Manual, pp. 504, 531.)

From "Wayside Hints."

=_239._= A TALK ABOUT PORCHES.

A country house without a porch is like a man without an eyebrow; it
gives expression, and gives expression where you most want it. The least
office of a porch is that of affording protection against the rain-beat
and the sun-beat. It is an interpreter of character; it humanizes bald
walls and windows; it emphasizes architectural tone; it gives hint of
hospitality; it is a hand stretched out (figuratively and lumberingly,
often) from the world within to the world without.

At a church door even, a porch seems to me to be a blessed thing, and
a most worthy and patent demonstration of the overflowing Christian
charity, and of the wish to give shelter. Of all the images of wayside
country churches which keep in my mind, those hang most persistently
and agreeably, which show their jutting, defensive rooflets to keep the
brunt of the storm from the church-goer while he yet fingers at the
latch of entrance.

I doubt if there be not something beguiling in a porch over the door of
a country shop--something that relieves the odium of bargaining, and
imbues even the small grocer with a flavor of cheap hospitalities. The
verandas (which is but a long translation of porch) that stretch along
the great river front of the Bellevue Hospital diffuse somehow a
gladsome cheer over that prodigious caravansery of the sick; and