his brother, his sister, his friends, all were remembered; his heart flooded over and he wept like a little child.  Blessed are they who can cry.  It is nature’s outlet for grief, and the heart would break if we could not cry.  The heart is not desolate when alone in the forest or the boundless grass-clothed plains of the West.  Nature is all around you, and her smile is beneficent.  There is companionship in the breeze, in the waving grass, the rustling leaves, and the meanings of the wind-swayed limbs of the yielding forest.  In the city’s multitude to move, and be unknown of all; to hear no recognized voice; to meet no sympathizing smile or eye; to be silent when all are speaking, and to know that not one of all these multitudes share a thought or wish with you—­this is desolation, the bitterness of solitude.

A year has gone by, and the youth has found a new home and has made new friends.  He is one of the busy world and struggling with it.  He is in commerce’s mart and is one of the multitude who come and congregate there for gain; in the hall of Justice, where litigants court the smiles and favors of the blind goddess, where right contends against wrong, and is as often trampled as triumphant; and where wisdom lends herself for hire, and bad men rarely meet their dues.

Pestilence had come, and the frightened multitude were fleeing from the scourge.  There was one who came and proffered the hospitality of his home—­where Hygeia smiled and fever never came.  Thither he went, but the poison was in his blood, and as he slept it seized upon his vitals.  His suffering was terrible, and for days life’s uncertain tenure seemed ready to release her hold on time.  In his fever-dream there was flitting about him a fairy form; it would come and go, as the moonlight on the restless wave—­a moment seen and in a moment gone.  He saw and knew nothing for many days distinctly; he would call for his mother and weep, when only winds would answer.  Delirium was in his brain, and wild fancies chased each other; he heard the crowing of cocks and saw his sister; his father would come to him, and he would stretch out his hand and grasp the shadowy nothing.  There was a halo of beauty all about him; prismatic hues trembled in the light, and the tones of sweet music floated upon the breeze.  He saw angels swimming in the golden light; the blue ether opened, and they came through to greet him and to welcome him to heaven.  Then all was darkness, the crisis had come.  He slept in oblivious ease—­it was long; and awaking, the fever was gone.  There was a gentle, sweet, sorrowful face before him—­their eyes met; for a moment only he looked—­it was she whom he had met and parted from without a hope of ever meeting again when robed as the Indian he stood upon the steamer’s deck and waved farewell forever.  He reached forth his hand.  She took it and approached, saying, “You are better, and will soon be well.”  He could only press her hand as the tears flooded over his eyes.  With a kerchief white as innocence it was wiped away and the hand that held it laid gently on his brow—­that touch thrilled his every nerve.