sold, and the family was about to scatter. The trunks were packed and
gone, the last article removed from the place, and the old stove was
left to burn out its fire at the last, that it, too, might be removed
next morning. And after the evening had come and was far spent, the
last evening wherein any right should remain to us to enter the old
home as its owners and occupants, I took my pass-key and slipped over
from the neighbor's for my final good-bye to the dear old home. The
fire-light, like the glance of a reproachful eye, shone upon me through
the gloom of the deserted parlor. "Have I not warmed you and comforted
you and cheered you with my genial glow?" a voice seemed to say; "and
now you have come to see me die! I am the vital spirit of your home.
I am dying, and nothing can ever reanimate these deserted rooms again
with the dear, the beautiful past."

Like the eye of one who is going down to death, the firelight faded and
finally went out in the pallor of ashes, while I, sitting alone in the
darkness, felt the whole world drearier for a little space for the
final extinguishment of this fire, the death hour of a once happy home.




XLVIII.

A TALK ABOUT DIVORCE.

Somebody asked me the other day if I favored divorce. Like everything
else in the world the matter depends largely upon special circumstance,
but in the main I do not believe in divorce. If husbands and wives
cannot live together without quarreling, let them live apart, but they