* * * * *



SUNSHINE.


I have always worked in the carpet-factories. My father and mother
worked there before me and my sisters, as long as they lived. My sisters
died first;--the one, I think, out of deep sorrow; the other from
too much joy.

My older sister worked hard, knew nothing else but work, never thought
of anything else, nor found any joy in work, scarcely in the earnings
that came from it. Perhaps she pined for want of more air, shut up in
the rooms all day, not caring to find it in walking or in the fields, or
even in books. Household-work awaited her daily after the factory-work,
and a dark, strange religion oppressed and did not sustain her, Sundays.
So we scarcely wondered when she died. It seemed, indeed, as if she had
died long ago,--as if the life had silently passed away from her,
leaving behind a working body that was glad at last to find a rest it
had never known before.

My other sister was far different. Very much younger, not even a shadow
of the death that had gone before weighed heavily upon her. Everybody
loved her, and her warm, flashing spirit that came out in her sunny
smile. She died in a season of joy, in the first flush of summer. She
died, as the June flowers died, after their happy summer-day of life.