But when the beams of a midday sun had ceased to flash from the foaming sea, I should wish my cloud to bear away to the western sky, and divesting itself of its snowy whiteness, stand there, arrayed in the brilliant hues of the setting sun. Yes, well should I love to be stationed there, and see it catch those parting rays, and, transforming them to dyes of purple and crimson, shine forth in its evening vestment, with a border of brightest gold. Then could I watch the king of day as he sinks into his watery bed, leaving behind a line of crimson light to mark the path which led him to his place of rest. Yet once, O only once, should I love to have that cloud pass on--on--on among the myriads of stars; and leaving them all behind, go far away into the empty void of space beyond. I should love, for once, to be _alone_. Alone! where _could_ I be alone? But I would fain be where there is no other, save the INVISIBLE, and there, where not even one distant star should send its feeble rays to tell of a universe beyond, there would I rest upon that soft light cloud, and with a fathomless depth below me, and a measureless waste above and around me, there would I---- "Your looms are going without filling," said a loud voice at my elbow; so I ran as fast as possible and changed my shuttles. ELLA. OUR DUTY TO STRANGERS. "Deal gently with the stranger's heart."--MRS. HEMANS. The factory girl has trials, as every one of the class can testify. It was hard for thee to leave "Thy hearth, thy home, thy vintage land. The voices of thy hindred band,"-- was it not, my sister? Yes, there was a burden at your heart as you turned away from father, mother, sister, and brother, to meet the cold glance of strange stage-companions. There was the mournfulness of the funeral dirge and knell, in the crack of the driver's whip, and in the rattling of the coach-wheels. And when the last familiar object receded from your fixed gaze, there was a sense of utter desolation at your heart. There was a half-formed wish that you could lie down on your own bed, and die, rather than encounter the new trials before you. Home may be a capacious farm-house, or a lowly cottage, it matters not. It is _home_. It is the spot around which the dearest affections and hopes of the heart cluster and rest. When we turn away, a thousand tendrils are broken, and they bleed.--Lovelier scenes _might_ open before us, but that only "the loved are lovely." Yet until new interests are awakened, and new loves adopted, there is a constant heaviness of heart, more oppressive than can be imagined by those who have never felt it. The "kindred band" may be made up of the intelligent and elegant, or of the illiterate and vulgar; it matters not. Our hearts yearn for their companionship. We would rejoice with them in health, or watch over them in sickness.