“If you admire the scenery so much at first, what will your sensations be when you have grown intimate with its beauty?  Nature enters into our humanity like human acquaintances.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, much mystified.

“There are some places like some people—­the more we study them the more they are admired, we are continually discovering hidden beauties.  But you must study nature closely, at all hours and seasons, to discover her subtle charms.”

“Won’t you teach me what you have learned?”

“If I can do so I shall be glad; but I think we must each study her for ourselves.  She has no text books that I have ever seen.”

“I wonder do we all see things alike?  Does that sea, now a sheet of rose and amethyst, and the sky that seems another part of the same, and the green trees, and hills, and rocks, look to you as they do to me?”

“Not yet, my child.  When you have studied them as long, and have the memories of years clustering around each well-remembered spot, they may look the same to you as they now do to me; but not till then,” she added, I fancied a little sadly.

“Probably I shall enjoy this exquisite view better without the memories; they usually hold a sting.”

“That depends on the way we use life.  To live as God wills, leaves no sting for after thought.”

“Not if death comes and takes our loved ones?  How alone I am in the world because of him.”

“There are far sadder experiences than yours.  Death is not always our worst enemy; we may have a death in life, compared with which Death itself is an angel of light.”

“Oh, what a strange, sad thing life is at the best!  Is it worth being born and suffering so much for all the joy we find?”

“No, indeed, if this life were all; but it is only the faint dawn of a brighter, grander existence, more worthy the gift of a God.”

“But we must die to get to that fuller, higher life;” I said, suddenly remembering poor Blake’s dead wife.

She smiled compassionately.

“It is hard convincing you young people that even death may be a tender friend, a welcome messenger.  But we won’t talk in this strain any longer, I scarce know why we drifted into it.  I want your first impressions of home to be joyous, for they are apt to haunt us long after we make the discovery that they were not correct.”

“I wonder if you are not something of a philosopher?  I never heard any one talk just like you.”

“Certainly not anything so formidable, and learned as that.  I am only a plain little woman, with no special mission except to make those around me happy.”

“That is a very beautiful mission, and I am sure you meet with success, which is not the fate of every one with a career.”

“Ah, if you begin praising me I must leave; but first let me tell you dinner will be served at six.  Mr. Winthrop is a great student, and is already, for so young a man, a very successful author; and he likes dinner late so as to have all the longer time for hard work.  The evenings he takes for light reading and rest.”