Draxy’s Hymn.

  I cannot think but God must know
  About the thing I long for so;
  I know He is so good, so kind,
  I cannot think but He will find
  Some way to help, some way to show
  Me to the thing I long for so.

  I stretch my hand—­it lies so near: 
  It looks so sweet, it looks so dear. 
  “Dear Lord,” I pray, “Oh, let me know
  If it is wrong to want it so?”
  He only smiles—­He does not speak: 
  My heart grows weaker and more weak,
  With looking at the thing so dear,
  Which lies so far, and yet so near.

Now, Lord, I leave at thy loved feet This thing which looks so near, so sweet; I will not seek, I will not long—­ almost fear I have been wrong.  I’ll go, and work the harder, Lord, And wait till by some loud, clear word Thou callest me to thy loved feet, To take this thing so dear, so sweet.

Part II.

As the spring drew near, a new anxiety began to press upon Draxy.  Reuben drooped.  The sea-shore had never suited him.  He pined at heart for the inland air, the green fields, the fragrant woods.  This yearning always was strongest in the spring, when he saw the earth waking up around him; but now the yearning became more than yearning.  It was the home-sickness of which men have died.  Reuben said little, but Draxy divined all.  She had known it from the first, but had tried to hope that he could conquer it.

Draxy spent many wakeful hours at night now.  The deed of the New Hampshire land lay in her upper bureau drawer, wrapped in an old handkerchief.  She read it over, and over, and over.  She looked again and again at the faded pink township on the old atlas.  “Who knows,” thought she, “but that land was overlooked and forgotten?  It is so near the ‘ungranted lands,’ which must be wilderness, I suppose!” Slowly a dim purpose struggled in Draxy’s brain.  It would do no harm to find out.  But how?  No more journeys must be taken on uncertainties.  At last, late one night, the inspiration came.  Who shall say that it is not an unseen power which sometimes suggests to sorely tried human hearts the one possible escape?  Draxy was in bed.  She rose, lighted her candle, and wrote two letters.  Then she went back to bed and slept peacefully.  In the morning when she kissed her father good-by, she looked wistfully in his face.  She had never kept any secret from him before, except the secret of her verses.  “But he must not be disappointed again,” said Draxy; “and there is no real hope.”

She dropped her letter into the post-office and went to her work.

The letter was addressed—­

“To the Postmaster of Clairvend,

“New Hampshire.”

It was a very short letter.

“Dear sir:—­I wish to ask some help from a minister in your town.  If there is more than one minister, will you please give my letter to the kindest one.  Yours truly,