He made himself wonderfully useful there, and the children loved him.  John got along splendidly, and bought the saw-mill; for Ben, although better, could not do any work at the mill, and John was very glad to own it.

I am ashamed to say that now and then a small-souled individual would ventilate his miserable prejudices, and expressions like the following came to our ears: 

“Wonder what’ll happen if the niggers all get free; got one for a saw-mill owner already;” all of which fell, to be sure, at John’s feet with an ignorant thud.  Still, when we looked at him and realized his noble nature, it seemed too bad to think there could be one such word spoken.

How fortunate it is that our hearts do naturally retain the perfume of the roses, and forget the presence of the thorns!  The wiser we grow the more natural we become; and on the rock of truth we can stand, feeling no jar, when the missiles of a grovelling mind are hurled against its base.  When we get tired, however, and are forced by the pressure of material circumstances to wander down into the valley, while we stand even then in the shelter of our mountain, still we find our feet sometimes soiled by the gathered mud.

Here is where the weak-hearted of our earth fail, and, looking not to the mountains, become at last settled in the valley, and suffer even to the end, borne down by the fettering chains of a life which is, at best, only breathing.  Their wings held close, they cannot rise beyond the clouds and fog into the clearer atmosphere of a higher condition.

My fortieth birthday is upon me.  I am sitting in the room where, since the day of our wedding, all of my best thoughts have been written.  Sharp winds blow around our dwelling, but our hearts heed not their harsh voices.  Louis and I have been retrospecting to-day, reading together the journal of the past two years.  We have kept it together, devoting two pages to each day, each of us writing one.  It is not uninteresting; many changes have been dotted down; and still, to look in upon us, you could not see them.  Here is the date of one, the death of good Mr. Davis, and an account of the sermon preached by Louis at his funeral, the witnessing of his last experience among us, and the blessed comfort it gave us, as with his death-cold lips he murmured, “My wife.”  Clara and all, he saw their beckoning hands and angelic faces.  He heard sweet music blending with our voices as we sang to him at his request.

“It is enough; let us rejoice together,” said Louis, “for he has gone to his own, and he shall have no more pain forever.”