Lent is a wonderful still time among the church people who are given to fish and eggs, and morning service for weeks and weeks while it lasts. But the last three days are what I want to tell you about; for during the time when hard-boiled eggs are so much the fashion, Cousin E. E. and myself were in Washington, where people rest a little from parties, and eat a good many oysters in a serious way, but could no more get up a regular Easter jubilee than they could tell where the money goes to that ought to build up the Washington monument, but don't. No; Cousin E. E., who keeps getting higher and higher in her church notions, was determined to spend her Easter at home. "Easter! what does that mean?" I seem to hear you say. "Is it a woman, or was it named after one? Is it--" Stop, sisters, that question is too much for me; I don't know. Wasn't there a handsome woman of the Jewish persuasion who put on her good clothes and came round the king, her husband, when her relations were all kept out of office, or something of that kind? Perhaps this Easter is named after her; but then it seems to me as if the names weren't just the same. Anyway, the three days they call Easter mean a solemn thing that we haven't thought enough of in our parts, up to this time. It means those three days when our Lord lay in the tomb. The first day, sisters, is held in remembrance of a death that was meant to make men holy. That was suffered for you and me. It is called Good Friday, and a great many people in these parts hold it as the most solemn day of all the year. I think it is. My own heart bows itself in dumb reverence as the thought of all it means settles down upon me. I wonder that so many years of my life have gone by without giving the day a thought. Surely, sisters, Christ did not die for the Catholics and Episcopalians alone. Well, sisters, I did not mean to preach or exhort out of season, but my heart has been touched, and out of its fulness I have spoken. "Are we a-going to your High Church?" says I to Cousin E. E. when she came to my room Friday morning, and asked if I was ready. "No," says she; "even that does not reach my ideas of what is due to the occasion. We will go still higher--to St. Stephen's." "Catholic, isn't it?" says I. "Yes," says she, with a sigh, "the Mother Church. You will, at least, be interested." "I never was in a Catholic meeting-house," says I, "but to-day I feel like worshipping anywhere, cold as it is." "Not so cold as our Lord's tomb," says she, shivering a little. I, too, felt cold chills a-creeping over me. "Come," she says, "it is time." XLVIII. A CHURCH HIGHER YET.