But my tailor was cheerful. Nothing could disturb his serenity. His thin white face was always lit with a smile, and his eyes shone with a peace that passed my understanding. Hour after hour he would sing an asthmatic little song that came in wheezes from his starved lungs—a song that was pitiful and cracked, but that came from his heart so freighted with love and praise that it found the ears of Him who softens all distress and sweetens all harmonies. I wondered where all this happiness came from. How gushed this abundant stream from this broken reed—how sprung this luxuriant flower of peace from the scant soil of poverty? From these hard conditions, how came this ever-fresh felicity? After he had been turned out of his home, the tailor was taken sick. His little song gave way to a hectic cough. His place at the work-room was vacant, and a scanty bed in wretched lodgings held his frail and fevered frame. The thin fingers clutched the cover uneasily, as if they were restless of being idle while the little ones were crying for bread. The tired man tossed to and fro, racked by pain,—but still his face was full of content, and no word of bitterness escaped him. And the little song, though the poor lungs could not carry it to the lips, and the trembling lips could not syllable its music, still lived in his heart and shone through his happy eyes. “I will be happy soon,” he said in a faltering way; “I will be better soon—strong enough to go to work like a man again, for Bessie and the babies.” And he did get better—better until his face had worn so thin that you could count his heart-beats by the flush of blood that came and died in his cheeks—better until his face had sharpened and his smiles had worn their deep lines about his mouth—better until the poor fingers lay helpless at his side, and his eyes had lost their brightness. And one day, as his wife sat by his side, and the sun streamed in the windows, and the air was full of the fragrance of spring—he turned his face toward her and said: “I am better now, my dear.” And, noting a rapturous smile playing about his mouth, and a strange light kindling in his eyes, she bended her head forward to lay her wifely kiss upon his face. Ah! a last kiss, good wife, for thy husband! Thy kiss caught his soul as it fluttered from his pale lips, and the flickering pulse had died in his patient wrist, and the little song had faded from his heart and gone to swell a divine chorus,—and at last, after years of waiting, the old man was well!