e," I gasped; "no pulsating, breathing soul!"

"No," replied the same still, soft voice; "these forms belong to the
things of the past. In God's good time they breathed the breath of life;
they had _then_ a being and a purpose on this earth. Their day has
departed--their work is done."

So saying, the voice grew still: the leaden weight which had pressed upon
my eyelids was lifted off: I awoke.

Filled with reveries of the past--my eyes closed to every thing
without--sleep had indeed overtaken me as I sat listening to the old
church-clock. But my vision was not all a vision: my dream-children came
not without their teaching. If they had been called up in folly, yet in
their going did they leave behind a lesson of wisdom.

The morning dawned--the blessed Christmas-morning! With it came my good and
dutiful, my real life-children. When they were all assembled round me, and
when, subdued and thoughtful beneath the tender and gracious associations
of the day, each in turn ministered, reverently and lovingly, to the old
mother's need of body and of soul, my heart was melted within me. Blessed,
indeed, was I in a lot full to overflowing of all the good gifts which a
wise and merciful Maker could lavish upon his erring and craving creature.
I stood reproved. I felt humbled to think that I should ever for a moment
have indulged one idle or restless longing for the restoration of that
past which had done its appointed work, and out of which so gracious a
present had arisen. One idea impressed me strongly: I could not but feel
that had the craving of my soul been answered in reality, as my dream had
foreshadowed; and had the wise and beneficent order of nature been
disturbed and distorted from its just relations, how fearful would have
been the result! Here, in my green old age, I stood among a new
generation, honored for what I was, beloved for what I had been. What if,
at some mortal wish in some freak of nature, the form which I now bore
were forever to remain before the eyes of my children! Were such a thing
to befall, how would their souls ever be lifted upward to the
contemplation of that higher state of being into which it is my hope soon
to pass when the hand which guided me hither shall beckon me hence? At the
thought my heart was chastened. Never since that night have I indulged in
any one wish framed in opposition to nature's laws. _Now_ I find my
dream-children in the present; and to the past I yield willingly all
t