The matin-bells, or the birds, or both, awoke me early, but when I got downstairs I found my host had preceded me.  His fine face looked fresh and strong, and yet I wondered when he had slept.

After breakfast, the old housekeeper hovered near.

“What is it, Margaret?” said the Father, gently.

“You haven’t forgotten your engagement?” asked the woman, with just a quaver of anxiety.

“Oh no, Margaret”; then turning to me, “Come, you shall go with me—­we will talk of Fenelon and Madame Guyon as we walk.  It is eight miles and back, but you will not mind the distance.  Oh, didn’t I tell you where I’m going?  You saw the old man at the church last night—­it is his daughter—­she is dying—­dying of consumption.  She has not been a good girl.  She went away to Paris, three years ago, and her parents never heard from her.  We tried to find her, but could not; and now she has come home of her own accord—­come home to die.  I baptized her twenty years ago—­how fast the time has flown!”

The priest took a stout staff from the corner, and handing me its mate we started away.  Down the white, dusty highway we went; out on the stony road where yesterday, as the darkness gathered, trudged an old man in wooden shoes and with a cordwood cudgel—­at his heels a dog of Flanders.

HARRIET MARTINEAU

You better live your best and act your best and think your best today; for today is the sure preparation for tomorrow and all the other tomorrows that follow. —­Life’s Uses

[Illustration:  Harriet Martineau]

I believe it was Thackeray who once expressed a regret that Harriet Martineau had not shown better judgment in choosing her parents.

She was born into one of those big families where there is not love enough to go ’round.  The mother was a robustious woman with a termagant temper; she was what you call “practical.”  She arose each morning, like Solomon’s ideal wife, while it was yet dark, and proceeded to set her house in order.  She made the children go to bed when they were not sleepy and get up when they were.  There was no beauty-sleep in that household, not even forty winks; and did any member prove recreant and require a douse of cold water, not only did he get the douse but he also heard quoted for a year and a day that remark concerning the sluggard, “A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep:  so shall thy poverty come as one that traveleth, and thy want as an armed man.”

This big, bustling Amazon was never known to weep but once, and that was when Lord Nelson died.  To show any emotion would have been to reveal a weakness, and a caress would have been proof positive of folly.  Life was a stern business and this earth-journey a warfare.  She cooked, she swept, she scrubbed, she sewed.

And although she withheld every loving word and kept back all demonstration of affection, yet her children were always well cared for:  they were well clothed, they had plenty to eat, and a warm place to sleep.  And in times of sickness this mother would send all others to rest, and herself would watch by the bedside until the shadows stole away and the sunrise came again.  I wonder where you have lived all your life if you have never known a woman like that?