Thus suddenly the door, so long mysteriously closed, flew open wide, “on golden hinges turning.”  What Salmon saw within was heaven.  He was dazzled.  He was almost stunned with happiness.  His lips quivered, his voice failed him as he spoke.

“Mr. Plumley, this is—­you are—­too kind!”

“You accept?”

“Most gratefully!”

The young man was regaining possession of himself.  He grasped the other’s hand.

“You do not know what this is to me, Sir!  You cannot know from what you have saved me!  Providence has surely sent you to me!  I cannot thank you now; but some day—­perhaps—­it may be in my power to do you a service.”

He was not the only one happy.  Mr. Plumley felt the sweetness of doing a kind action for one who was truly worthy and grateful.  From that moment they were friends.  Salmon engaged to see him again, and make arrangements for entering the school the next Monday; and they parted.

His benefactor gone, Salmon hastened to tell the good news to Mrs. Markham.  But he could not remain in the house.  His joy was too great to be thus confined.  Again he went out,—­but how different now the world looked to his eyes!  He had not observed before that it was such a lovely spring day.  The sky overhead was of heaven’s deepest hue.  The pure, sweet air was like the elixir of life.  The hills were wondrously beautiful, all about the city; and it seemed, that, whichever way he turned, there were birds singing in sympathy with his joy.  The Potomac, stretching away with soft and misty glimmer between its hazy banks, was like the river of some exquisite dream.

It was no selfish happiness he felt.  He thought of his mother and sisters at home,—­of all those to whom he was indebted; and in the lightness of his spirit, after its heavy burden had been taken away, he lifted up his heart in thanksgiving to the Giver of all blessings.

The school, transferred to his charge, continued successful; and it opened the way to successes of greater magnitude.  Through all his subsequent career he looked back to this as the beginning; and he ever retained for Mr. Plumley the feeling we cherish for one whom we regard as a Heaven-appointed agent of some great benefaction.  Were it not for trenching upon ground too private and personal, we might here complete the romance, by relating how the young man’s vaguely uttered presentiment, that he might some day render him a service, was, long afterwards, touchingly realized.  But enough.  All we promised ourselves at the start was a glance at the Secretary’s first visit to Washington.

* * * * *

HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS.

BY CHRISTOPHER CROWFIELD.

IV.

Talking to you in this way once a month, O my confidential reader, there seems to be danger, as in all intervals of friendship, that we shall not readily be able to take up our strain of conversation, just where we left off.  Suffer me, therefore, to remind you that the month past left us seated at the fireside, just as we had finished reading of what a home was, and how to make one.