A few years ago, I appropriated a wedding gift from a friend to the purchase of a guitar for her, as a birthday gift in her early sickness.  To assist her in learning to play upon it, I first gained some knowledge of the instrument.  We kept it in its case in my study; and sometimes, on coming home, and feeling in the mood of it, I wished to handle it, and instead of unlocking the case to see if the instrument were there, I would knock upon it; and straightway what turbulence of harmonies rang from all the strings.  Now, it is so with every thing connected with her memory; every thing associated with her, even though outwardly sombre and dreary, like those black cases for musical instruments, being appealed to, or accidentally encountered, sings of her still, with a troubled and a pathetic, pleasing music.

In her very early childhood, she and two of the children were sick with a children’s epidemic.  The crisis had passed; an anxious day with regard to one of the children had been followed by entire relief from our fears.  As we sat at table that evening, we heard music from the chambers of the sick children; we opened the door and listened.  This daughter was singing, and the chorus of her little school song was, “All are here, all are here.”  She did not think of the signification which those words had to our hearts.  It was one of those household pleasures which have so much of heaven in them.  I can sometimes hear her singing to me now, from those upper skies, in the name of the four who have gone there from my dwelling, “All are here, all are here.”  She bequeathed her guitar, but her voice and hand now join with “the voice of harpers harping with their harps.”

We sometimes think that they miss great good who depart from us in early years; that one who has arrived at the entrance to the world’s great feast must be sadly disappointed to be led away, never to go in.  Now, it is true that we must not shrink from the battle of life; we must take upon ourselves, if God ordains it, the great jeopardy of disappointment and sorrow, and the chance of life’s joys; we must each stand in his lot; we must send children forth into the harvest of the earth for sheaves, and whether they faint and die under their load, or deck themselves with garlands,—­still, let them be laborers together with God, and let us not seek exemption for them.  But if God ordains their early translation to heaven, what can earth afford them in the way of pleasure, granting the cup to be full and unalloyed, to be compared with fulness of joy?  Fair maidens in heaven,—­and O, how many of them has consumption gathered in!—­fair maidens there are like the white flowers, which are sacred to peculiar times and scenes.  How goodly must be their array!  What a perpetual spring tide of vivacious joy and delight do they create in heaven.  It is pleasant to have a child among them.