Impatience and panting courage have served to carry us through the unequal battle, and now, resting in the equable tones of middle life, how sweet a wonder seem the blackness, the purple, the golden lights of youth! We sit in the unemotional shade, and slake our thirst for the old joys and sorrows by fondly recalling the ghosts of dead hours and dead dreams, of forgotten faiths and dim-remembered faces; and though we may not desire to re-live each year with its burden of pains and pangs, surely we may tell ourselves that it is good to have lived those past years, even if tears seem the most prominent part of our inheritance. Then, however sad the living moment, we still had the consolation of that beautiful and vision-bearing word "To-morrow." In youth, sorrow fells us to-day, and joy awakes us to-morrow. It is always--Land may be in sight to-morrow! The night is dark, but hope dances blithely through our veins with the delicious assurance that to-morrow brings the sun. The world is empty, but vague dreams tell us that to-morrow love will cross our path and fill the universe. Hope is the magician that waved us forward and carried us recklessly through briar and bramble, with undaunted confidence in life, in ourselves, and in all things around us. Each fall was ever the last, each pang the precursor of eternal happiness. And now it is over. Hope's magic wand for us is broken, and she has folded her wings and dropped into slumber that wakens not again: henceforth our best friend is drab-robed content. THE END. End of Project Gutenberg's Autobiography of a Child, by Hannah Lynch