"I could have told him," said Walter, "but I did not choose to; I could have told him that love was the whole." And that story of Walter is only the story of the way in which Ethan also kept up the home tie, and came back, when he got a chance, from his voyages. His voyages were not on the sea. He "hired out" with a canal-boatman. Sometimes they went to the lake, and once they set sail there and came as far as Cleveland. Ethan made a great deal of fun in pretending to tell great sea-stories, like Swiss Family Robinson and Sinbad the Sailor. Fresh-water voyaging has its funny side, as has the deep-sea sailing. But Ethan did not hold to it long. His experience with grain brought him at last to Chicago, and he engaged there in the work of an elevator. But he lived always the old home life. There were three other boys he got acquainted with, one at Mr. Eggleston's church, one at the Custom House, and one at the place where he got his dinner, and they used to come up to his little room in the seventh story of the McKenzie House, and sit on his bed and in his chairs, just as the boys from the blacksmith's came into the corn-room. These four boys made a literary club "for reading Shakespeare and the British essayists." Often did they laugh afterwards at its title. They called it the Club of the Tetrarchy, because they thought it grand to have a Greek name. Whatever its name was, it kept them out of mischief. These boys grew up to be four ruling powers in Western life. And when, years after, some one asked Ethan how it was that he had so stanch a friend in Torrey, Ethan told the history of the seventh-story room at the McKenzie House, and he said, "Love is the whole." Central in all his life was the little cabin of two rooms and a loft over it. There is no day of his life, from that time to this, of which Fanny cannot tell you the story from his weekly letters home. For though she does not live in the cabin now, she keeps the old letters filed and in order, and once a week steadily Ethan has written to her, and the letters are all sealed now with his own seal-ring, and on the seal-ring is carved the inscription, "Love is the whole." I must not try to tell you the story of Alice's fortunes, or Sarah's. Every day of their lives was a romance, as is every day of yours and mine. Every day was a love-story, as may be every day of yours and mine, if we will make it so. As they all grew older their homes were all somewhat parted. The boys became men and married. The girls became women and married. George never pulled down the old farm-house, not even when he and Mr. Vaux built the beautiful house that stands next to it to-day. He put trellises on the sides of it. He trained cotoneaster and Roxbury wax-work over it. He carved a cross himself, and fastened it in the gable. Above the door, as you went in, was a picture of Mary Mother and her Child, with this inscription:--