listening ear with its tones of music.

If to the mother had come this illusion, it remained not long. Wild
with grief, she turned away as the sweet face she had so loved to
gaze upon was hidden from her straining eyes for ever.

Hidden from her eyes, did we say? Only hidden from her natural eyes.
Still he was before the eyes of her spirit in all his living beauty.
But, to her natural affections, he was lost--even as he had faded
from before her natural eyes; and, in the agony of bereavement, it
seemed that her heart would break. Back to her darkened chamber she
went. Her nearest and dearest friends gathered around, seeking
lovingly to sustain her in her great affliction; but she refused to
be comforted.

At length, as at first said, the tempest of grief, which, for a
time, raged so violently in the heart of Mrs. Freeland, sobbed
itself away, and the stricken mother passed into the land of dreams.

For the most part, dreams are fantastic. Yet they are not always so.
In states of deep sorrow or strong trial, when the heart turns from
the natural world, hopeless of aid or consolation, truth often comes
in dreams and similitudes.

The mother found herself in the company of two beautiful maidens, in
the very flower of youth; and as she gazed earnestly into their
faces, which seemed transparent from an inward celestial light, she
saw expectation therein--loving expectation. They stood beneath the
eastern portico of a pleasant dwelling, around which stately
trees--the branches vocal with the song of feathered