of the sick children; we opened the door and listened. This daughter was
singing, and the chorus of her little school song was, "All are here,
all are here." She did not think of the signification which those words
had to our hearts. It was one of those household pleasures which have so
much of heaven in them. I can sometimes hear her singing to me now,
from those upper skies, in the name of the four who have gone there from
my dwelling, "All are here, all are here." She bequeathed her guitar,
but her voice and hand now join with "the voice of harpers harping with
their harps."

We sometimes think that they miss great good who depart from us in early
years; that one who has arrived at the entrance to the world's great
feast must be sadly disappointed to be led away, never to go in. Now, it
is true that we must not shrink from the battle of life; we must take
upon ourselves, if God ordains it, the great jeopardy of disappointment
and sorrow, and the chance of life's joys; we must each stand in his
lot; we must send children forth into the harvest of the earth for
sheaves, and whether they faint and die under their load, or deck
themselves with garlands,--still, let them be laborers together with
God, and let us not seek exemption for them. But if God ordains their
early translation to heaven, what can earth afford them in the way of
pleasure, granting the cup to be full and unalloyed, to be compared with
fulness of joy? Fair maidens in heaven,--and O, how many of them has
consumption gathered in!--fair maidens there are like the white flowers,
which are sacred to peculiar times and scenes. How goodly must be their
array! What a perpetual spring tide of vivacious joy and delight do they
create in heaven. It is pleasant to have a child among them.

It has been my privilege to see, in this child, an example of true
preparation for death, which begins before the expectation of dying