A banquet followed, spread upon the grass, and composed of contributions from every cottage matron. When this was ended, the long train of youthful forms, each garlanded with a trimming of flowers, swept up a vast avenue of beech to the village church. There the oration of the day was pronounced by one of their number robed in white. It was a simple and heart-touching sentence that last came from those childish lips--a word of faith to be preserved when all the bright twisted garlands of the day should be withered; when that last tribute, a chaplet bound by cypress leaves, should be laid upon each bier. Hark! now from the young circle before the low pulpit arise the simple tones of a psalm, swelling on the air in rich gradations, interrupted only by the throbbing of those tender hearts, in the fullness of their innocent joy. Their rosy cheeks and glistening eyes at that moment, what need have these of record? Are they not written still in the memories of the surviving throng? The gushing melody from those infantile voices at length ceased, and the assemblage dispersed from the building. Again out in the open air, again on the broad common, again scattered hitherward and thitherward, the children sought their homes, many of them possibly regretting that the festival of roses had not to begin again, but all solaced by the thought that it had become for once more an event in their personal history. And so to all intents the events of the day seemed ended. Several of the children had lingered in the meeting-house, after the general crowd had left it. By degrees, however, these few loiterers all departed, either singly or by pairs, excepting young Frank Winthrop and Grace Bartlett, who lingered to collect and garner up a few of those perishable wreaths that garlanded and adorned the modest sanctuary. The platform in front of the pulpit, erected for the accommodation of the children, was completely hidden in leaves and flowers. Laurel branches as graceful as stooping seraphims swept over the surface of the clerk’s desk; the supporters of the pulpit lifted to its floor long, slender lines of jessamine; while from the rafters of the roof hung rich festoons of daffodil--making altogether a completely new interior; the high-backed chair of the clerk beneath was so richly adorned with roses that one kneeling before it might, without any great effort of imagination, have been mistaken for a votary of Flora.