It was a beautiful winter-morning.  The new fallen snow lay light and fleecy about the porch and on the evergreens before the door, and cushioned and covered all the thousand minute branches of the trees till they stood forth as if traced in silver on the deep blue of the sky.  A sparkling, dazzling scene it was, which lay spread out before the windows of that comfortable family parlor, where the morning sunshine and the blazing wood-fire on the hearth seemed to feel a generous rivalry as to which should be most inspiriting.

There were children in the room, a merry group of all sizes, from the boy of ten years old to the little one whose first uncertain footsteps were coaxed forth by a lure, and cheered onward like a triumphal progress by admiring brothers and sisters.  It was the morning of New-Year’s day, which had always been held as a high festival in the family, as it is in many families of New England, all the merriment and festal observance elsewhere bestowed upon Christmas having been transferred by Puritan preferences to this holiday.

It was just the weather for a holiday—­brisk and bracing.  Sleigh-bells were jingling merrily, as the deep drifts of the road having been overcome, one after another of the families of the neighborhood had commenced their round, bearing baskets filled with gifts and pleasant tokens of remembrance, with the customary wishes and salutations of the day.

The young mother sat in the group of happy children, but she did not smile on them.  Her hand rested fondly on one little head and another, as they pressed to her side with eager question or exclamation.  She drew the little one with a quick, earnest clasp to her heaving bosom.  Her tremulous lips refused to obey the impulse of her will; she left Edward’s question unanswered, and abruptly placing Willie in the arms of his careful nurse, she rushed away from the gladness she could not bear, to the solitude of her own chamber.  There she fell upon her knees and covered her face, while the storm of sorrow she had striven so hard to stem, swept over her.  Amid groans of agony, came forth the low murmur—­“‘Write his children fatherless, and his wife a widow!’ Oh, my God, why must this be? His children fatherless, his wife a widow!”

Soon came the quick sobs which told that the overcharged heart which had seemed ready to burst, had found temporary relief in tears; then followed the low moans of calmer endurance, and the widow’s heart sunk back into all it had yet found of peace under this great bereavement, though it had been months since the blow fell; the peace of submission—­“Not my will, but thine, O God, be done!” This time it expressed itself in the quaint words of Herbert;

  “Do thou thy holy will;—­
  I will lie still.”