inds would make the warm glowin' hearth fire of
home seem brighter. Love would make its own sunshine. Happiness would
warm the chill of the cold November day.

Thomas J. and Maggie stood on the pier, both well and strong; Tommy
sprung into their arms. They looked onto his round rosy face through
tears of gratitude and thankfulness and embraced me with the same. And
wuzn't Thomas J. happy? Yes, indeed he wuz, when he held his boy in
his arms and had holt of his ma's hands, and his pa's too. And Maggie,
too, how warmly she embraced us with tears and smiles chasing each
other over her pretty face. Tirzah Ann and Whitfield wuz in the city,
but didn't come to the minute, bein' belated, as we learnt afterwards,
by Tirzah Ann a waverin' in a big department store between a pink and
a blue shiffon front for a new dress.

But they appeared in a few minutes, Tirzah Ann with her arms full of
bundles which dribbled onnoticed on the pier as she advanced and
throwed her arms round her pa's and ma's neck. Love is home, and with
our dear children's arms about us and their warm smiles of delight and
welcome and their loving words in our ear, we had got home.

The children wuz stayin' at a fashionable boardin' house, kept by Miss
Eliphalet Snow, a distant relation of Maggie's, who had lost her
pardner and her property, but kep' her pride and took boarders for
company, so she said. And we wuz all goin' to start for Jonesville
together the next day. But as the baggage of our party wuz kinder
mixed up, Josiah and I thought we would go with Miss Meechim's party
to the tarven and stay.

Robert Strong and our son, Thomas J., met like two ships of one line
with one flag wavin' over 'em, and bearing the same sealed orders from
their Captain above. How congenial they wuz, they had been friends
always, made so onbeknown to them, they only had to discover each
other, and then they wuz intimate to once, and dear.

Dorothy and Miss Meechim and the children greeted each other with
smiles and glad, gay words. Yes, all wuz a happy confusion of light
words, gay laughter, Saratoga trunks, smiles, joy, satchel bags--we
had got home.

As I stood there surrounded by all that I prized most on earth I had a
glimpse of a haggard lookin' form arrayed in tattered finery, a bent
figure, a young old face, old with drink and dissipation, that looked
some way familiar though I couldn't place her. She looked at our party
with a strange interest and seemed to say