For lo! the days are hastening on, By prophet bards foretold, When with the ever-circling years Comes round the age of gold; When Peace shall over all the earth Its ancient splendors fling, And the whole world give back the song Which now the angels sing.” “What a tissue of rotten lies Christianity is!” thought Dr. Richards (who could not sing), leaning in his favorite attitude upon the mantel-piece, and listening to Henry Randolph’s fine bass, as it bore up the flute-like notes of his son. “There is Randolph, now, by a turn of his pen to-morrow will make ‘life’s crushing load’ heavier, maybe, to hundreds, and his own pockets heavier at the same time, and then will square accounts with his conscience by giving fifty dollars to some charity. Faugh!” But at this moment an exclamation from Mrs. Randolph interrupted him. Louis and Pinkie, while the singing was under way, had got together into a corner, where they were discovered to be embracing one another in a very pretty baby fashion. “But I tisses F’eddy,” observed Pinkie. “It is very different,” remarked Mrs. Randolph. “Freddy is your cousin; but this little boy is no relation, and is besides in quite a different state of life.” “Fut is state of life?” asked Pinkie. “Is it tause he tan yun ayound and F’eddy tant?” “You’ll understand when you are older, dear,” said her mother; but whether Pinkie would have been satisfied with this answer was rendered forever doubtful by the announcement of the carriage. “Good-by, child,” said the great lady, patting Louis’ golden head; “I wish you every good fortune that is proper for you to have. I was your mother’s best friend, if she had only known it, and would have saved her from the misery that afterwards, in the righteous Providence of God, overtook her.” “What is misery?” asked little Louis, wistfully; “is it dying? My papa says she died ’cause we was poor, and the millionnaires wouldn’t ’vide. Are you a millionnaire, and would you ’vide?” “Quite a promising young Socialist,” observed Mr. Randolph. “His father must be a dangerous man.” But Louis did not hear him; he was listening eagerly to the lady. “My dear, life and death are the gift of God. Your mother broke his laws, and he punished her”— “Jennie! Jennie! don’t speak so to the child.” “He should hear it from some one, Alice, and there is no one else likely to tell him. Heaven knows how kindly I feel towards poor Dora, but I dare not palliate her sin. ‘Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers’ are the words of Scripture, and poor Dora has paid the penalty for disregarding them; happier so than if she had seen her sin visited upon _others_.” “Jennie, my dear Jennie, indeed the horses will catch their death; you forget how cold it is,” cried her husband, in an agony.