lm consideration of it. It seemed unreal, impossible, a dream--any
thing but what it was--the direst of worldly woes--the most tremendous
of human punishments.

I remember vividly a day passed in the chamber of the resigned creature,
about two months after the first indication of her illness. Her disease
had increased rapidly, and the signs of its ravages were painfully
manifest in her sunken eye, her hectic cheek, her hollow voice, her
continual cough. Her spirit became more tranquil as her body retreated
from the world--her hopes more firm, her belief in the love of her
Saviour--his will and power to save her, more clear, and free from all
perplexity. I had never beheld so beautiful a sight as the devoted maid
presented to my view. I had never supposed it possible to exist; and
thus, as I sat at her side, though the thought of death was ever
present, it was as of a terror in a milkwhite shroud--a monster
enveloped and concealed beneath a robe of beauty. I listened to her with
enchantment whilst she spoke of the littleness of this world, and the
boundless happiness that awaited true believers in the next--of the
unutterable mercy of God, in removing us from a scene of trouble whilst
our views were cloudless, and our hopes sure and abiding. Yes, charmed
by the unruffled air, the angelic look, I could forget even my mortality
for a moment, and feel my living soul in deep communion with a superior
and brighter spirit. It was when she recalled me to earth by a
reminiscence of our first days of love, that the bruised heart was made
sensible of pain, and of its lonely widowed lot. Then the tears would
not be checked, but rushed passionately forth, and, as the clouds shut
out and hid the one brief glimpse of heaven, flowed unrestrained.

Her mind was in a sweet composed state during the interview to which I
allude. She had pleasure in referring to the days of her childhood, and
in speaking of the happiness which she had found amongst her native
hills.

"How little, Caleb," she said, "is the mind occupied with thoughts of
death in childhood--with any thoughts of actual lasting evil! We cannot
see these things in childhood--we cannot penetrate so deeply or throw
our gaze so far, we are so occupied with the joys that are round about
us. Is it not so? Our parents are ever with us. Day succeeds to day--one
so like the other--and our home becomes our world. A sorrow comes at
length--a parent dies--the first and dearest object in