anticipation of meeting her again. Bessie, if I should die, you must
not mourn for me. Think of me as gone into another world where sooner
or later you will come too."

"Why do you say such things, Hugh?" said Bessie, laying down her brush
with her eyes full of tears.

"Because they happened to come into my mind, I suppose. Why, you are
not crying! Nonsense, Brownie! look at me. Do I look like dying? Am I
not a young giant, with every prospect of outliving all my family? I
fully expect to live to a hale old age, and you have no idea how full
and busy my life is going to be. Go to work again, and I will tell you
all my plans; I have never told them to any one before. In the first
place, I shall go, of course, to New York, and enter Cousin John's
establishment. I shall work with all my might, and, with the aid of my
relationship, I shall no doubt be able to obtain a good position there
in the course of a few years. Gradually I shall mount higher and
higher, I shall make myself indispensable to the firm, and at the end
of ten years you will see me a partner; at the end of twenty, a rich
man. I shall then retire from active business, and spend part of my
time in travelling, although I intend to be very domestic, also. I
shall buy beautiful pictures, choice books, and fine statues; I shall
give private concerts, and, if possible, have a small orchestra of my
own; I shall entertain my friends in the easiest and most charming
manner. In addition to my city home, I shall have a yacht for summer
cruises, and a pretty cottage on the seashore, and I shall invite
pleasant people to visit me; not the rich and the fashionable merely,
but others who are shut out from all such luxuries, young authors,
poor artists, musicians, and many others who are obliged to work night
and day while their intellectual inferiors live in ease. Oh! I shall