In some things the old lady had a little resemblance to Miss Martineau. She had the same cheerful activity of mind, the same readiness of adapting herself to circumstances--things in a great measure constitutional. She was, moreover, a very shrewd, sensible woman, and deeply pious--pious in the most excellent way: really, vitally, seriously. She came of a good old puritan stock, where piety had been cherished from generation to generation. Some physiologists say, that even the _acquired_ moral qualities and habits descend to the succeeding generation. It is possible an aptness for good or evil may be, and often is, inherited from those who have gone before. It would seem to have been so in this case. The pious father and mother, children of as pious parents, had left this pious daughter--and her excellencies had descended in accumulated measure to her son. This old lay had been sorely tried--death and poverty had done their worst--except in as far as the cruel ravager had spared her this one boy, one of many children, all followed the delicate, consumptive man who had been their father. She had borne it all. Strong in faith, she had surrendered her treasures to the Lord of Life, in trust that they should be found again when he maketh up his jewels. Cheerful as was her temper, life's course had been too rough with her, for her to value it very much, when those lovely, promising buds, but half disclosed, were one after the other gathered. But she had escaped that racking agony of the loving, but too faithless mother--when all the sweets of nature in its abundance flow around her, and _they_ are not there to enjoy. "When suns shine bright o'er heaven's blue vault serene, Birds sing in trees, and sweet flowers deck the plain, Weep I for thee, who in the cold, cold grave Sleep, and all nature's harmony is vain. But when dark clouds and threat'ning storms arise, And doubt and fear my trembling soul invade; My heart one comfort owns, _thou_ art not here, Safe slumbering, in the earth's kind bosom laid." She was happier far than the author of these lines. She looked upward; she almost saw those she had lost, the objects of a glorious resurrection--already living in the ineffable presence of the God whom they had so faithfully endeavored to serve. I need not tell you, after this, that her spirits were subdued to a holy calmness and composure. Her life had been one of the most active endeavors after usefulness. The good she had managed to do can scarcely be calculated. Grains of sand they might be, these hoarded minutes, but it was golden sand; the heap accumulated was large and precious, at the end of sixty-five years.