"They were near him. His home was always within reach. But he was for several years at a large school in Paris, and again at one in Germany. At sixteen he had done with school and took his education into his own hands. He lived at home, but his parents did not meddle with him, except to aid him to carry out his plans. It was a course that would not answer with every young man, perhaps; but I don't know that any other would have done with him. He is one to cut out his own path. He chose not only his own studies, but, to a great extent, his own acquaintances; took journeys when he pleased and as he pleased. Wherever he was, with whomever, he always held his own walk straight and firm. You would not think that boy had seen so much of the world?" "I could have thought he had been carefully guarded from it, and shielded almost from the very knowledge of wrong." "He has never been kept out of danger of any kind; but it seems there was none anywhere for him. He is now, as you say, just as much a simple, innocent boy as if he were nothing more." "His wings are grown, and shed off evil as the birds' do rain." The Doctor started as this voice came from behind his chair. Tabitha, who had disappeared as soon as her attendance on the table was no longer needed, had reëntered unobserved, and stood, her basket of vegetables poised on her head, absorbed in our conversation, until she forgot herself into joining in it. SUNDAY, April 7, 1844. The storm which has been gathering since Friday evening came on last night. This morning the rain pelts heavily against the windows. This is not the Easter-Sunday I was looking forward to when I urged Harry Dudley to stay for it. He would have been glad to stay, I know; but he did not think it right to ask Dr. Borrow to change his plans again, and merely for a matter of pleasure. When I addressed the Doctor himself on the subject, he showed me a paper on which he had planned out occupation for every day and almost for every hour of the two weeks that were to pass before our meeting at Omocqua. I had not the courage to remonstrate. I am afraid we shall have none of the neighbors here to-day. But the table is set out with all the prettiest things the house affords, ready for the collation which is to follow the morning reading. This is a munificence we allow ourselves at Christmas and Easter. We keep ceremoniously and heartily the chief holy days, the religious and the national. In your large cities, where sources of emotion and instruction are open on every hand, where the actual day is so full and so animated that it is conscious of wanting nothing outside of itself, it is not strange, perhaps, that men should become careless of these commemorations or yield them only a formal regard. Our life must widen and enrich itself, by stretching its sympathies and claims far beyond its material limits. We cannot forego our part in the sorrows and joys of universal humanity.