And when away—those long letters, dating from the cottage home, are what tie me to life. That cherished wife, far dearer to me now than when she wrote that first letter, which seemed a dark veil between me and the future—writes me now as tenderly as then. She narrates in her delicate way all the incidents of the home life; she tells me of their rides, and of their games, and of the new planted trees—of all their sunny days, and of their frolics on the lawn; she tells me how Jamie is studying, and of little Carry’s beauty growing every day, and of roguish Paul—so like his father. And she sends such a kiss from each of them, and bids me such adieu and such “God’s blessing” that it seems as if an angel guarded me. But this is not all; for Jamie has written a postscript: ——“Dear father,” he says, “mother wishes me to tell you how I am studying. What would you think, father, to have me talk in French to you, when you come back? I wish you would come back, though; the hawthorns are coming out, and the apricot under my window is all full of blossoms. If you should bring me a present, as you almost always do, I would like a fishing rod. Your affectionate son, JAMIE.” And little Carry has her fine, rambling characters running into a second postscript: “Why don’t you come, papa; you stay too long; I have ridden the pony twice; once he most threw me off. This is all from CARRY.” And Paul has taken the pen, too, and in his extraordinary effort to make a big P, has made a very big blot. And Jamie writes under it—“This is Paul’s work, pa; but he says it’s a love blot, only he loves you ten hundred times more.” And after your return Jamie will insist that you should go with him to the brook, and sit down with him upon a tuft of the brake, to fling off a line into the eddies, though only the nibbling roach are sporting below. You have instructed the workmen to spare the clumps of bank-willows, that the wood-duck may have a covert in winter, and that the Bob-o’-Lincolns may have a quiet nesting place in the spring. Sometimes your wife—too kind to deny such favor—will stroll with you along the meadow banks, and you pick meadow daisies in memory of the old time. Little Carry weaves them into rude chaplets, to dress the forehead of Paul, and they dance along the greensward, and switch off the daffodils, and blow away the dandelion seeds, to see if their wishes are to come true. Jamie holds a buttercup under Carry’s chin, to find if she loves gold; and Paul, the rogue, teases them by sticking a thistle into sister’s curls.