Last of all come the Deaths,--only one. Poor Charlie! How it
looks?--"Died 12 September 18--Charles Henry, aged four years." You know
just how it looks. You have turned to it often; there you seem to be
joined to him, though only by the turning of a leaf. And over your
thoughts, as you look at that page of the record, there sometimes
wanders a vague shadowy fear, which _will_ come,--that your own name may
soon be there. You try to drop the notion, as if it were not fairly your
own; you affect to slight it, as you would slight a boy who presumed on
your acquaintance, but whom you have no desire to know. It is a common
thing, you will find, with our world to decline familiarity with those
ideas that fright us.

Yet your mother--how strange it is!--has no fears of such dark fancies.
Even now as you stand beside her, and as the twilight deepens in the
room, her low, silvery voice is stealing upon your ear, telling you that
she cannot be long with you; that the time is coming when you must be
guided by your own judgment, and struggle with the world unaided by the
friends of your boyhood. There is a little pride, and a great deal more
of anxiety, in your thoughts now, as you look steadfastly into the home
blaze, while those delicate fingers, so tender of your happiness, play
with the locks upon your brow.

----To struggle with the world,--that is a proud thing; to struggle
alone,--there lies the doubt! Then crowds in swift upon the calm of
boyhood the first anxious thought of youth; then chases over the sky of
Spring the first heated and wrathful cloud of Summer.

But the lamps are now lit in the little parlor, and they shed a soft
haze to the farthest corner of the room; while the firelight streams
over the floor, where puss lies purring. Little Madge is there; she has