"Parting and forgetting? What faithful heart can do these? Our great thoughts, our great affections, the Truths of our life, never leave us. Surely they cannot separate from our consciousness; shall follow it whithersoever that shall go; and are of their nature divine and immortal." THACKERAY. "I can only say that I sympathise with your grief, and if faith means anything at all it is trusting to those instincts, or feelings, or whatever they may be called, which assure us of some life after this." _Tennyson--a Memoir_, by his Son. "What is it when a child dies? It is the great head-master calling that child up into his own room, away from all the under-teachers, to finish his education under his own eye, close at his feet. The whole thought of a child's growth and development in heaven instead of here on earth, is one of the most exalting and bewildering on which the mind can rest." PHILLIPS BROOKS. Death of Young Children SEPTEMBER 5 "Nothing is left or lost, nothing of good Or lovely; but whatever its first springs Has drawn from God, returns to Him again." _On an Early Death_, TRENCH. "When one comes to the loss of young children--a sad perplexity--let it not be forgotten that they were given. If in the hour of bitterest grief it were asked of a bereaved mother whether she would prefer never to have possessed in order that she might never have lost--her heart would be very indignant. No little child has ever come from God and stayed a brief while in some human home--to return again to the Father--without making glad that home and leaving behind some trace of heaven. A family had counted themselves poorer without those quaint sayings, those cunning caresses, that soft touch, that sudden smile. This short visit was not an incident: it was a benediction. The child departs, the remembrances, the influence, the associations remain. If one should allow us to have Sarto's Annunciation for a month, we would thank him: when he resumed it for his home he would not take everything, for its loveliness of maid and angel is now ours for ever. And if God recalls the child He lent, then let us thank Him for the loan, and consider that what made that child the messenger of God--its purity, modesty, trustfulness, gladness--has passed into our soul." _The Potter's Wheel_, Dr. JOHN WATSON. The Dead SEPTEMBER 6 "The dead abide with us! Though stark and cold Earth seems to grip them, they are with us still:-- They have forged our chains of being for good or ill And their invisible hands these hands yet hold. Our perishable bodies are the mould In which their strong imperishable will-- Mortality's deep yearning to fulfil-- Hath grown incorporate through dim time untold.