rom the roll entirely, and then turned back into the street with
less regret than I had reckoned on.

Of all the old friends I had known in boyhood, I saw but two besides
Emma--two sisters whose histories were strange and wonderful. They
greeted me as of yore, and we talked of the past with pity mingled
with delight. Dick, my old chum, Emma's soldier-brother, was miles and
miles away: not a boy of all our tribe was left in Heartsease to tell
me the story of the past. I began to be glad that it was so, for the
great gulf that lay between me and the boy I had been seemed to render
up no ghosts but were shrouded in sorrow.

There was one spot I might have visited, but did not: it seemed to me
better to wander to and fro about the dear old parsonage with the
living spirit near me, and to go out again into the world with the
softened influences of that lessened but unbroken circle consoling me,
than to seek the new grave that had not yet had time to clothe itself
with violets, and the sight of which could have given me nothing but
pain. By and by, I thought, let me return, and when it has healed over
and is sweet with summer flowers I will sprinkle rue upon it and
breathe her name. I went back from Heartsease like the bearer of
strange news. We had all sat together and thought, rather than
uttered, the memories of the past: they weighed me down, but they were
precious freights. When I looked once more, and for the last time,
upon the darling village drowsing in the sunshine, I felt that I had
learned the burden of the hearth: Not length of days is given, but the
sweetness and strength thereof: their memory shall live even though
the dead be dust. Out of the loam of this corrupting body springs
heavenward the invisible blossom of the soul. You have watered it with
tears: let the performance thereof comfort you. Though ye die, yet
shall ye live: thus saith the Lord. But shall the old days delight us
and the past live? Yea, verily, saith the Spirit--once, but never
again!

CHARLES WARREN STODDARD.

THE SCIENTIFIC LIFE.

It has been my good fortune to be thrown much with men of science, and
to find among them companions made agreeable by the best of social
qualities and by many larger capacities. Perhaps it is their life
apart, their consciousness of belonging to a distinct class, that has
made them, as I have found them, so strikingly individual, and partly
for this very reason so interesting. Indeed, it is curiou