Two years after this, I sat on an autumn evening in my beloved parsonage by the fire.  Near to me sat my dear little wife, my sweet, Wilhelmina, and spun.  I was just about to read to her a sermon which I intended to preach on the next Sunday, and from which I promised myself much edification, as well for her as for the assembled congregation.  Whilst I was turning over the leaves, a loose paper fell out.  It was the paper upon which, on that evening two years before, in a very different situation, I had written down my cheerful and my sad thoughts.  I showed it to my wife.  She read, smiled with a tear in her eye, and with a roguish countenance which, as I fancy, is particular to her, took the pen and wrote on the other side of the paper: 

“The author can now, thank God, strike out a description which would stand in perfect contrast to that which he once, in a dark hour, sketched of an unfortunate person, as he himself was then.

“Now he is no more lonesome, no more deserted.  His quiet sighs are answered, his secret griefs shared, by a wife tenderly devoted to him.  He goes, her heart follows him; he comes back, she meets him with smiles; his tears flow not unobserved, they are dried by her hand, and his smiles beam again in hers; for him she gathers flowers, to wreathe around his brow, to strew in his path.  He has his own fireside, friends devoted to him, and, counts as his relations all those who have none of their own.  He loves, he is beloved; he can make people feel happy, he is himself happy.”

Truly had my Wilhelmina described the present; and, animated by feelings which are gay and delicious as the beams of the spring sun, I will now, as hitherto, let my little troop of light hopes bound out into the future.

I hope, too, that my sermon for the next Sunday may not be without benefit to my hearers; and even if the obdurate should sleep, I hope that neither this nor any other of the greater or the less unpleasantnesses which can happen to me may go to my heart and disturb my rest.  I know my Wilhelmina, and believe also that I know myself sufficiently, to hope with certainty that I may always make her happy.  The sweet angel has given me hope that we may soon be able to add a little creature to our little happy family, I hope, in the future, to be yet multiplied.  For my children I have all kinds of hopes in petto.  If I have a son, I hope that he will be my successor; if I have a daughter, then—­if August would wait—­ but I fancy that he is just about to be married.

I hope in time to find a publisher for my sermons.  I hope to live yet a hundred years with my wife.

We—­that is to say, my Wilhelmina and I—­hope, during this time, to be able to dry a great many tears, and to shed as few ourselves as our lot, as children of the earth, may permit.

We hope not to survive each other.

Lastly, we hope always to be able to hope; and when the hour comes that the hopes of the green earth vanish before the clear light of eternal certainty, then we hope that the All-good Father may pass a mild sentence upon His greatful and, in humility, hoping children.