It is Nelly's own fair hand, yet sadly blotted,--blotted with her tears, and blotted with yours. ----"It is all over, dear, dear Clarence! Oh, how I wish you were here to mourn with us! I can hardly now believe that our poor mother is indeed dead." ----Dead!--It is a terrible word! You repeat it with a fresh burst of grief. The letter is crumpled in your hand. Unfold it again, sobbing, and read on. "For a week she had been failing every day; but on Saturday we thought her very much better. I told her I felt sure she would live to see you again. "'I shall never see him again, Nelly,' said she, bursting into tears." ----Ah, Clarence, where is your youthful pride, and your strength now?--with only that frail paper to annoy you, crushed in your grasp! "She sent for father, and taking his hand in hers, told him she was dying. I am glad you did not see his grief. I was kneeling beside her, and she put her hand upon my head, and let it rest there for a moment, while her lips moved as if she were praying. "'Kiss me, Nelly,' said she, growing fainter: kiss me again for Clarence.' "A little while after she died." For a long time you remain with only that letter, and your thought, for company. You pace up and down your chamber: again you seat yourself, and lean your head upon the table, enfeebled by the very grief that you cherish still. The whole day passes thus: you excuse yourself from all companionship: you have not the heart to tell the story of your troubles to Dalton,--least of all, to Miss Dalton. How is this? Is sorrow too selfish, or too holy? Toward nightfall there is a calmer and stronger feeling. The voice of the present world comes to your ear again. But you move away from it unobserved to that stronger voice of God in the Cataract. Great masses of angry cloud hang over the west; but beneath them the red harvest sun shines over the long reach of Canadian shore, and bathes the whirling rapids in splendor. You stroll alone over the quaking bridge, and under the giant trees of the Island, to the edge of the British Fall. You go out to the little shattered tower, and gaze down, with sensations that will last till death, upon the deep emerald of those awful masses of water. It is not the place for a bad man to ponder; it is not the atmosphere for foul thoughts, or weak ones. A man is never better than when he has the humblest sense of himself: he is never so unlike the spirit of Evil as when his pride is utterly vanished. You linger, looking upon the stream of fading sunlight that plays across the rapids, and down into the shadow of the depths below, lit up with their clouds of spray;--yet farther down, your sight swims upon the black eddying masses, with white ribbons streaming across their glassy surface; and your dizzy eye fastens upon the frail cockle-shells--their stout oarsmen dwindled to pygmies--that dance like atoms upon the vast chasm, or like your own weak resolves upon the whirl of Time.