A cursory reading will suggest to any young person that the paragraph says Ailie is going to die, and that she does not fear death; but how much more it means to him who can understand it all. _The end was drawing on_--Ailie was going to her death. _The golden bowl was breaking; the silver cord was fast being loosed._ Turn to your Bible (_Ecclesiastes_ xii, 3-7), and read what is said. _That "animula blandula, vagula, hospes comesque" was about to flee._ That sweet but fleeting life, friend, companion and sojourner with her, was about to leave. _She was walking alone through the valley of the shadow._ "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil." _Into which one day we must all enter._ May we be equally fearless of evil! _She was not alone._ Her God was with her every moment, and in her hours of consciousness she knew Him to be present. _We knew whose rod and staff were comforting her._ "Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me." Like the Psalmist of old she leaned upon the arm of her God and as she thus approached the dark valley, the light of her faith shone into our souls. The Latin quotation and the allusions to the Bible are skilfully used to give solemnity to the idea of death, to show how inevitable it is, and how for long ages it has been met with the same serene faith and deep religious feeling that made Ailie beautiful in the face of death. Yes, there is more in the paragraph than the statement that Ailie was going to die and that she was not afraid. To illustrate a different style of close reading and a method of securing it by questioning, we will quote part of a paragraph from _Braddock's Defeat_ (Volume V, page 379) by Benjamin Franklin: "Our Assembly apprehending, from some information, that he [Braddock] had conceived violent prejudices against them, as averse to the service, wished me to wait upon him, not as from them, but as postmaster-general, under the guise of proposing to settle with him the mode of conducting with most celerity and certainty the despatches between him and the governors of the several provinces with whom he must necessarily have continual correspondence, and of which they proposed to bear the expense." The questions designed to bring out the meaning of the above paragraph, to which the answers are usually quite obvious, might be as follows: