May 4. I have been to Esther’s grave, and found Spring there, a glimpse of the immortal sunshine and blossoming in which she lives. I have found love growing for me in her home, in one young, glad heart; and in one life-worn and sorrow-worn. I have felt _her_ spirit living and breathing yet in her earthly home; from her flowers, her books, her domestic life, in all the atmosphere of the places haunted by her footsteps,--the home where she lived and loved and suffered, the lovely resting-place of her dust by the river side. Of such lives as hers new life is born, and I have brought back with me a deeper reality to live in, heaven bends nearer over me, earth is lifted up to heaven. I only needed to breathe in another, freer atmosphere than this; and the dear Lord sent me just where it was best for me to go. Scarcely could I have found anything so good for my soul’s health, this side of the “fields beyond the swelling flood,” where Esther, my heart’s sister, walks with the Angels in the bloom of immortal health and loveliness. It is strange, but I seem to know her more _humanly_ now than when she was here. I saw her but once or twice; she was to me as a spirit, a voice in the wilderness, to guide and to cheer. Now I feel how she wore the same robes of flesh, wearily and painfully, yet cheering and blessing household and friends by her patient, tender love. I never thought before how beautiful it would be to visit the Holy Land--to tread in the Lord’s footsteps. I had thought that the spirit-love might be dimmed by traces of the earthly; but it is not so; I have tracked the footsteps of this loving pilgrim through the Gethsemane and Olivet of her Holy Land of home, and I know her and hers more truly; I am hers, and she is mine more surely now forever. May 10. Heaven is a _place_, a home, a rest: but it is a Spiritual habitation, Truth and Love and Peace are the pillars that support it; and it is the truthful, the loving, and the holy only who may enter in. How then, O beloved Guide, may such as I? Because Thou hast drawn me by love to Love,--hast given an “earnest” of that life even here, imparting new sympathies, hopes, and aspirations, infusing Thine own life into mine, and Thou wilt never forsake Thine own work, Thine own home! Yet so imperfectly I hear and follow Thee, so slow, so cold, so hard my nature yet,--when the summons comes, will it not find me lagging on the heavenly road, hardly at home within the beautiful gates? So many die with noble purposes half-grown into achievement, so many live but half in the light, and yet the Light is in them,--how will it be with them, and with me; how shall the stains of the mortal be put off? Death has no cleansing power, and defilement may not enter heaven. There is a mystery here which is too painful; yet we know not what that other life is, nor how hereafter, more than here, the Shepherd leads His own.