"Hardly recovered from my illness, I stayed with the good pastor
Ortler through Christmas week, and a month afterwards. Never did I
pass pleasanter days. The wife Rosalind was as kind as a sister, and
her children grew soon to like me as an old friend. Very simple was
their manner of life, while the air they breathed was fragrant with
the love they bore to Him who made and redeemed them, and who had in
his good providence, set them in a pleasant place.

"Christmas to them was not a week of jubilee alone. Busy hands
decorated the little church, and visits were made to the poor and
sick, and presents were given without the hope of reward. Sitting by
the parlor fire at night, the pastor told of the parishioners he had
seen, their wants and needs; while Rosalind knit stockings, and
fashioned garments.

"'It would seem that one so well fitted for society would tire of this
narrow bound,' I once said. With an eye brimming over with tenderness,
the pastor replied: 'There are souls to save here quite as precious as
anywhere else.' I felt humbled before his quiet glance. This was the
work for him to do; this was the work he loved. What matter in what
part of the vineyard? wherever there was a soul. But this mountain
grandeur pleased him. These quiet solitudes led him upward. The
glorious diadem of the hills was always urging him onward. Hard and
self-denying as his life, he had ample recompense in daily, hourly
communion with the Father through the majesty of his works."

"I should like to live where I could see all this," whispered Carry.

"The heart that loves, finds beauty and grandeur everywhere,"