id, in his usual gentle tone.

"Nothing in particular, father," I answered.

"Well, I'm going to see an old man--John Jamieson--I don't think you
know him: he has not been able to come to church for a long time. They
tell me he is dying. Would you like to go with me?"

"Yes, father. But won't you take Missy?"

"Not if you will walk with me. It's only about three miles."

"Very well, father. I should like to go with you."

My father talked about various things on the way. I remember in
particular some remarks he made about reading Virgil, for I had just
begun the AEneid. For one thing, he told me I must scan every line
until I could make it sound like poetry, else I should neither enjoy
it properly, nor be fair to the author. Then he repeated some lines
from Milton, saying them first just as if they were prose, and after
that the same lines as they ought to be sounded, making me mark the
difference. Next he did the same with a few of the opening lines of
Virgil's great poem, and made me feel the difference there.

"The sound is the shape of it, you know, Ranald," he said, "for a poem
is all for the ear and not for the eye. The eye sees only the sense of
it; the ear sees the shape of it. To judge poetry without heeding the
sound of it, is nearly as bad as to judge a rose by smelling it with
your eyes shut. The sound, besides being a beautiful thing in itself,
has a sense in it which helps the other out. A psalm tune, if it's the
right one, helps you to see how beautiful the psalm is. Every poem
carries its own tune in its own heart, and to read it aloud is the
only way to bring out its tune."

I liked Virgil ever so much better after this, and always tried to get
at the tune of it, and of every other poem I read.

"The right way of anything," said my father, "may be called the tune of
it. We have to find out the tune of our own lives. Some people don't
seem ever to find it out, and so their lives are a broken and
uncomfortable thing to them--full of ups and downs and disappointments,
and never going as it was meant to go."

"But what is the right tune of a body's life, father?"

"The will of God, my boy."

"But how is a person to know that, father?"

"By trying to do what he knows of it already. Everybody has a
different kind of tune in his life, and no one can find out another's
tune for him, though he _may_ help him to find it for himself."

"But aren't we to read the Bible, father?"

"Yes, if it's in