=_237._= THE SISTERS.

The sisters were together, together for the last time in the happy home of their childhood.  The window before them was thrown open, and the shadows of evening were slowly passing from each familiar outline on which the gazers looked.  They were both young and fair; and one, the elder, wore that pale wreath the maiden wears but once.  The accustomed smile had forsaken her lip now, and the orange-flowers were scarcely whiter than the cheek they shaded.  The sister’s hands were clasped in each other, and they sat silently watching the gradual brightening of the crescent moon, and the coming forth, one by one, of the stars.  Not a cloud was floating in the quiet sky; the light wind hardly stirred the young leaves, and the air was fraught with the fragrance of early spring flowers.  It was the hour when reverie is deepest, and fantasies have the earnestness of truth, when memory is melancholy in its vividness, and we feel, “almost like a reality,” the presence of those who may bless our pathway no more.  The loved, the lost—­

  “So many, yet how few!”—­

gather around us, not as they are, chastened and troubled by battling with trials and disappointments, but as they used to be, in the glow of unwearied expectation.  Old fears flit before us altered into pleasures, and old hopes return bathed in tears.

* * * * *

=_Alice Cary, 1820-1871._= (Manual, p. 484.)

From “Clovernook.”

=_238._= THE END OF THE HISTORY.

And so with the various seasons of the year.  May, with her green lap full of sprouting leaves and bright blossoms, her song-birds making the orchards and meadows vocal, and rippling streams and cultivated gardens; June, with full-blown roses and humming-bees, plenteous meadows and wide cornfields, with embattled lines rising thick and green; August, with reddened orchards and heavy-headed harvests of grain, October, with yellow leaves and swart shadows; December, palaced in snow, and idly whistling through his numb fingers;-all have their various charm; and in the rose-bowers of summer, and as we spread our hands before the torches of winter, we say joyfully, “Thou hast made all things beautiful in their time.”  We sit around the fireside, and the angel feared and dreaded by us all comes in, and one is taken from our midst.  Hands that have caressed us, locks that have fallen over us like a bath of beauty, are hidden beneath shroud-folds.  We see the steep edges of the grave, and hear the heavy rumble of the clods; and, in the burst of passionate grief, it seems that we can never still the crying of our hearts.  But the days rise and set, dimly at first, and seasons come and go, and, by little and little, the weight rises from the heart, and the shadows drift from before the eyes, till we feel again the spirit of gladness, and see again the old beauty of the world.

* * * * *