atisfied with the neighborhood.

The auctioneer was a disagreeable-looking man, with a most unpleasant
voice, which gave me a sense of discomfort, the little old house and
its surroundings seemed so grave and silent and lonely. It was like
having all the noise and confusion on a Sunday. The house was so shut
in by the trees, that the only outlook to the world beyond was a
narrow gap in the pines, through which one could see the sea, bright,
blue and warm with sunshine, that summer day.

There was something wistful about the place, as there must have been
about the people who had lived there; yet, hungry and unsatisfied as
her life might have been in many ways, the poor old woman dreaded the
change.

The thought flashed through my mind that we all have more or less of
this same feeling about leaving this world for a better one. We have
the certainty that we shall be a great deal happier in heaven; but we
cling despairingly to the familiar things of this life. God pity the
people who find it so hard to believe what he says, and who are afraid
to die, and are afraid of the things they do not understand! I kept
thinking over and over of what Mrs. Wallis had said: 'A world of
change and loss!' What should we do if we did not have God's love to
make up for it, and if we did not know something of heaven already?

It seemed very doleful that everybody should look on the dark side of
the Widow Wallis's flitting, and I tried to suggest to her some of the
pleasures and advantages of it, once when I had a chance. And indeed
she was proud enough to be going away with her rich son; it was not
like selling her goods because she was too poor to keep the old home
any longer. I hoped the son would always be prosperous, and that the
son's wife would always be kind, and not be ashamed of her, or think
she was in the way. But I am afraid it may be a somewhat uneasy
idleness, and that there will not be much beside her knitting-work to
remind her of the old routine. She will even miss going back and
forward from the old well in storm and sunshine; she will miss looking
after the chickens, and her slow walks about the little place, or out
to a neighbor's for a bit of gossip, with the old brown checked
handkerchief over her head; and when the few homely, faithful old
flowers come up next year by the doorstep, there will be nobody to
care any thing about them.

I said good-by, and got into the wagon, and Georgie clambered in after
me with