“You know that I do not mean that; but that is nonsense about your going to heaven.” “But I did go there and it made me awful tired! I am glad that I returned to earth again,” said he. “Oh, August! You are perfectly horrid!” was Aimee’s shocked rejoinder. He smiled, but went on to relate his strange experience. “But you were not really dead, you know,” she replied as he finished the recital. “Do you think that?” he answered thoughtfully; “I should like to have some one—some person who really knows—explain the difference between that which is called trance, and death, except as to duration. Where was my soul during all that time? Not in the body of a certainty. I know that my spirit went to heaven; everything there was just as I had been taught from childhood that it would be; that teaching could not by any possibility be wrong!” he added conclusively, but with a merry twinkle in his eye. Later on, sweetly and seriously he said, “I shall always love and appreciate nature so much more for that experience; of things infinite we know not the method; we behold the result, and we know that the Creator _is_. All nature unites into a rhythm of grandest praise to Him who is part and parcel of all things good. The leaf on the tree whispers of his abiding presence; the flower that springs from the mold lifts its face to the sun and air, and speaks of the Life, glorifying Him with its beauteous colors. God is the very principle of all life. He is not an Idle God; his work goes on forever, without haste, without cessation. We are created in his image; not as to the physical, which must change its form, and subserve in other ways, but as to the spiritual, which, if we will not pervert our higher natures—will grow to sublime heights of purity and goodness—the higher we place our standard the nearer we approach the Divine. “We sin continually against our better selves, our physical bodies and our spiritual natures, we gorge the body and starve the mind; we overwork the perishable physical, and let the mental and spiritual rust, while we heap up a little gold and silver for those who shall come after us to squander and quarrel over. We strive after a heaven in the future, and neglect that which only is ours to-day. Why wait for an impossible time, and a mythical place? We had best take a share of it each day; it is here if we will accept it; for, dearest Aimee, what does heaven mean but _happiness_?” THE TRAGEDY OF THE GNOMES.