ard to look at that
unfortunate wuz a bent, haggard form that I thought I recognized. But
if it wuz a father watching and waiting in dretful hope and still more
dretful fear for the best beloved, I couldn't tell, for the crowd
pressed forward and he disappeared almost before I saw him. And I too
wuz agitated, for when I catched sight of the clustering hair, the
pretty rounded arms and form, an awful fear clutched my heart that I
trembled like a popple leaf and I see Dorothy turn white as a sheet
and Arvilly and Miss Meechim looked like them that sees a tragedy and
so did Robert Strong and Josiah.

But a closter look made us know that it wuz no one that we ever see.
It wuz not the dear one who wuz in our hearts day and night, it wuz
not our sweet Aronette and it wuz not Lucia. Poor father! doomed to
hunt in vain for her as long as his tremblin' limbs could carry him to
and fro under foreign skies and the sun and stars of his own land.
Poor seekin' eyes, turnin' away at the very last from visions of green
pastures and still waters to look once more down the sin-cursed
streets of earth for his heart's treasure! Dying eyes, dim with a
black shadow, blacker than the shadow of the Valley, cast from Agony
and Sin, sold to the crazed multitude for its undoing by sane men for
the silver of Judas. Love stronger than life, mightier than death,
never to be rewarded here. But we read of a time of rewards for deeds
done in the body. At whose dying beds will these black forms stand,
whose shadows torment humanity, to claim their own and go out with
them to their place they have prepared here for their soul's dwelling?
Hard question, but one that will have to be answered.

Robert Strong and Dorothy wanted to visit the Pantheon; specially the
tomb of Victor Hugo. It is a great buildin' with a dome that put me
some in mind of our own Capitol at Washington, D. C. It is adorned
with paintings and statutes by the most eminent artists and sculptors,
and the mighty shades of the past seem to walk through the solemn
aisles with us, specially before the statute of Victor Hugo. I felt
considerable well acquainted with him, havin' hearn Thomas J. read his
books so much. And as I stood there I had a great number of emotions
thinkin' what Victor had went through from his native land from first
to last: abuse, persecutions, sent off and brung back, etc., and I
thought of how his faithful "Toiler of the Sea" went through
superhuman labors to end in