Was Heaven an aggregate of homes like this? Did everlasting life move on in the same dear ordered channel--the dearest that human experiment had ever found--the channel of family love? Had one, after death, the old blessedness without the old burden? The old sweetness without the old mistake? The familiar rest, and never the familiar fret? Was there always in the eternal world “somebody to come home to”? And was there always the knowledge that it could not be the wrong person? Was all _that_ eliminated from celestial domestic life? Did Heaven solve the problem on which earth had done no more than speculate? While I stood, gone well astray on thoughts like these, feeling still too great a delicacy about my uninvited presence in this house, I heard the steps of the host, or so I took them to be; they had the indefinable ring of the master’s foot. I remained where I was, not without embarrassment, ready to apologize for my intrusion as soon as he should come within sight. He crossed the long room at the left, leisurely; I counted his quiet footsteps; he advanced, turned, saw me--I too, turned--and so, in this way, it came about that I stood face to face with my own father. ... I had found the eternal life full of the unexpected, but this was almost the sweetest thing that had happened to me yet. Presently my father took me over the house and the grounds; with a boyish delight, explaining to me how many years he had been building and constructing and waiting with patience in his heavenly home for the first one of his own to join him. Now, he too, should have “somebody to come home to.” As we dwelt upon the past and glanced at the future, our full hearts overflowed. He explained to me that my new life had but now, in the practical sense of the word, begun; since a human home was the centre of all growth and blessedness. When he had shown me to my own portion of the house, and bidden me welcome to it, he pointed out to me a certain room whose door stood always open, but whose threshold was never crossed. I hardly feel that I have the right, in this public way, to describe, in detail, the construction or adornment of this room. I need only say that Heaven itself seemed to have been ransacked to bring together the daintiest, the most delicate, the purest, thoughts and fancies that celestial skill or art could create. Years had gone to the creation of this spot; it was a growth of time, the occupation of that loneliness which must be even in the happy life, when death has temporarily separated two who had been one. I was quite prepared for his whispered words, when he said,-- “Your mother’s room, my dear. It will be all ready for her at any time.”