* * * “It is even so, my dear Cousin Paul—I shall write but little more; my hand trembles now. But I am ready. It is a glorious world beyond this—I know it is! And there we shall meet. I did hope to see you once again, and to hear your voice speaking to me as you used to speak. But I shall not. Life is too frail with me. I seem to live wholly now in the world where I am going—_there_ is my mother, and my father, and my little brother—we shall meet—I know we shall meet! * * * “The last—Paul. Never again in this world! I am happy—very happy. You will come to me. I can write no more. May good angels guard you, and bring you to Heaven!” —Shall I go on? But the toils of life are upon me. Private griefs do not break the force and the weight of the great—present. A life—at best the half of it, is before me. It is to be wrought out with nerve and work. And—blessed be God! there are gleams of sunlight upon it. That sweet Carry, doubly dear to me now that she is joined with my sorrow for the lost Isabel—shall be sought for! And with her sweet image floating before me, the NOON wanes, and the shadows of EVENING lengthen upon the land. [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] III EVENING THE future is a great land; how the lights and the shadows throng over it—bright and dark, slow and swift! Pride and ambition build up great castles on its plains—great monuments on the mountains, that reach heavenward, and dip their tops in the blue of Eternity! Then comes an earthquake—the earthquake of disappointment, of distrust, or of inaction, and lays them low. Gaping desolation widens its breaches everywhere; the eye is full of them, and can see nothing beside. By and by the sun peeps forth—as now from behind yonder cloud—and reanimates the soul. Fame beckons, sitting high in the heavens; and joy lends a halo to the vision. A thousand resolves stir your heart; your hand is hot and feverish for action; your brain works madly, and you snatch here and you snatch there, in the convulsive throes of your delirium. Perhaps you see some earnest, careful plodder, once far behind you, now toiling slowly but surely over the plain of life, until he seems near to grasping those brilliant phantoms which dance along the horizon of the future; and the sight stirs your soul to frenzy, and you bound on after him with the madness of a fever in your veins. But it was by no such action that the fortunate toiler has won his progress. His hand is steady, his brain is cool; his eye is fixed and sure. The Future is a great land; a man can not go round it in a day; he can not measure it with a bound; he can not bind its harvests into a single sheaf. It is wider than the vision, and has no end.