rella over his head, and pulls
up a weed now and then, and then strolls off with a straw in his mouth;
he also drives off sometimes on foraging expeditions, and comes back
with butter, eggs, etc., and on hot days takes a bath where a stream of
cold water dashes over him; "splendid" he says, and "horrid" I say.
The boys are up to everything; they are carpenters, and plumbers, and
trouters, and harnessers, and drivers; H. has just learned to solder,
and saves me no little trouble and expense by stopping leakages;
heretofore every holey vessel had to be sent out of town. Both boys have
gardens and sell vegetables to their father at extraordinary prices, and
they are now filling up a deep ditch 500 feet long at a "York shilling"
an hour--men get a "long shilling" and do the work no better. With the
money thus made they buy tools of all sorts, seeds and fruit trees,
but no nonsense. Three happier children than these three can not be
found....

You may be interested, too, to know what are the famous works of art we
are framing, as above referred to. Well, photographs of our kindred
and friends for one thing: my brothers, my husband's mother and other
relatives of his, Prof. and Mrs. Smith, Mr. and Mrs. B. B., and so on,
a good deal as it has happened, for everybody hasn't been photographed;
and some bodies have not given us their pictures--you, for instance, and
if you want to be hung as high as Haman in my den, nine feet square,
where I write, why, you can. Last summer I had a mania for illuminating,
and made about a cord of texts and mottoes; I can't paint, so I cut
letters out of red, blue and black paper, and deceived thereby the very
elect, for even Mrs. Washburn was taken in, and said they were painted
nicely.

Your little note has drawn large interest, hasn't it? Well, it deserved
its fate.

Hardly had she finished this letter when she was taken very ill. For a
while it seemed as if the time of her departure had come. At her request
the children were called to her bedside, and she gave them in turn her
dying counsels, bade them live for Christ as the only true, abiding
good, and then kissed each of them good-bye. She was much disappointed
on finding that her sickness, after all, was not an "invitation" from
the Master. "You don't get away _this_ time," said her husband to her,
half playfully, half exultingly, referring to her eagerness to go.

And here it may not be amiss to say a word as to her state of mind
resp