“Some circumstances occurred during this family feast, which were sufficiently characteristic of the partakers. Walberg (himself a very temperate man) pressed his father repeatedly to take more wine than he was accustomed to,--the old man gently declined it. The son still pressed it heartfully, and the old man complied with a wish to gratify his son, not himself. “The younger children, too, caressed their grandmother with the boisterous fondness of children. Their mother reproached them.--“Nay, let be,” said the gentle old woman. “They trouble you, mother,” said the wife of Walberg.--“They cannot trouble me long,” said the grandmother, with an emphatic smile. “Father,” said Walberg, “is not Everhard grown very tall?”--“The last time I saw him,” said the grandfather, “I stooped to kiss him; now I think he must stoop to kiss me.” And, at the word, Everhard darted like an arrow into the trembling arms that were opened to receive him, and his red and hairless lips were pressed to the snowy beard of his grandfather. “Cling there, my child,” said the exulting father.--“God grant your kiss may never be applied to lips less pure.”--“They never shall, my father!” said the susceptible boy, blushing at his own emotions--“I never wish to press any lips but those that will bless me like those of my grandfather.”---- “And do you wish,” said the old man jocularly, “that the blessing should _always_ issue from lips as rough and hoary as mine?” Everhard stood blushing behind the old man’s chair at this question, and Walberg, who heard the clock strike the hour at which he had been always accustomed, in prosperity or adversity, to summon his family to prayer, made a signal which his children well understood, and which was communicated in whispers to their aged relatives.--“Thank God,” said the aged grandmother to the young whisperer, and as she spoke, she sunk on her knees. Her grandchildren assisted her. “Thank God,” echoed the old man, bending his stiffened knees, and doffing his cap--“Thank God for this ‘shadow of a great rock in a weary land!’”--and he knelt, while Walberg, after reading a chapter or two from a German Bible which he held in his hands, pronounced an extempore prayer, imploring God to fill their hearts with gratitude for the temporal blessings they enjoyed, and to enable them “so to pass through things temporal, that they might not finally lose the things eternal.” At the close of the prayer, the family rose and saluted each other with that affection which has not its root in earth, and whose blossoms, however diminutive and colourless to the eye of man in this wretched soil, shall yet bear glorious fruit in the garden of God. It was a lovely sight to behold the young people assisting their aged relatives to arise from their knees,--and it was a lovelier hearing, to listen to the happy good-nights exchanged among the parting family. The wife of Walberg was most assiduous in preparing the comforts