onger Justice, but weak and
tender Mercy.

What makes that small, unopened missive so precious to that great rough
man? Why, 'tis from Home--from Home, that spot to which his heart is
tied with unseen cords and tendrils tighter than the muscles which hold
it in his swelling chest. Perhaps he left his Home caring little for it
at the time. Perhaps harsh necessity drove him from its tender roof to
lie beneath

THE THATCH OF AVARICE.

It does not matter. As the great river broadens in the Spring, so do his
feelings swell and overflow his nature now. Why does he tremble,--that
rough, weather-beaten man? Because there is but one place on the great
earth where "an eye will mark his coming and grow brighter." If that
beacon still burns for him, he can continue his voyage. If it has
gone out, if anything has happened to it, his way is dark; nothing
but the abiding hand of the Great Father can steady his helm and hold
him to his desolate course.

[Illustration: CHILDHOOD.

"Childhood is the bough where slumbered
Birds and blossoms many-numbered;
Age, that bough with snows encumbered."]

The man who wandered "mid pleasures and palaces," had no Home, and when
he died he died on the bleak shores of Northern Africa, and was buried
where he died, at the city of Tunis, where he held the office of United
States Consul. "To Adam," says Bishop Hare, "Paradise was Home. To the
good among his descendants,

HOME IS PARADISE."

"Are you not surprised," writes Dr. James Hamilton, "to find how
independent of money peace of conscience is, and how much happiness can
be condensed in the humblest home? A cottage will not hold the bulky
furniture and sumptuous accommodations of a mansion; but if love be
there, a cottage will hold as much happiness as might stock a palace."
"To be happy at home," writes Dr. Johnson in the _Rambler_, "is the
ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and
labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution." In the
mind of the good there gather about the old Home

HALO UPON HALO OF FOND THOUGHT,

of nearly idolatrous memory. Upon this very green, the joyous march of
youth went on. Here the glad days whirled round like wheels. At morn the
laugh was loud; at eve the laughter rang. To-day, perhaps the most
joyous of the flock lies in the earth. Perhaps the chief spirit of the
wildest gambols is bent with sharp affliction; the one that loved his
moth