From day to day you sink from life: the physician says the end is not far off; why should it be? There is very little elastic force within you to keep the end away. Madame is called, and your little boy. Your sight is dim, but they whisper that she is beside your bed; and you reach out your hand—both hands. You fancy you hear a sob—a strange sound! It seems as if it came from distant years—a confused, broken, sigh, sweeping over the long stretch of your life: and a sigh from your heart—not audible—answers it. Your trembling fingers clutch the hand of your little boy, and you drag him toward you, and move your lips, as if you would speak to him; and they place his head near you, so that you feel his fine hair brushing your cheek—“My boy, you must love—your mother!” Your other hand feels a quick, convulsive grasp, and something like a tear drops upon your face. Good God! Can it be indeed a tear? You strain your vision, and a feeble smile flits over your features as you seem to see her figure—the figure of the painting—bending over you; and you feel a bound at your heart—the same bound that you felt on your bridal morning; the same bound which you used to feel in the springtime of your life. —Only one—rich, full bound of the heart—that is all! —My cigar is out. I could not have lit it again if I would. It was wholly burned. “Aunt Tabithy”—said I, as I finished reading—“may I smoke now under your rose tree?” Aunt Tabithy, who had laid down her knitting to hear me—smiled—brushed a tear from her old eyes, said—“Yes—Isaac,” and having scratched the back of her head with the disengaged needle, resumed her knitting. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] FOURTH REVERIE MORNING, NOON AND EVENING IT is a spring day under the oaks—the loved oaks of a once cherished home—now, alas, mine no longer! I had sold the old farmhouse, and the groves, and the cool springs, where I had bathed my head in the heats of summer; and with the first warm days of May, they were to pass from me forever. Seventy years they had been in the possession of my mother’s family; for seventy years they had borne the same name of proprietorship; for seventy years, the Lares of our country home, often neglected, almost forgotten—yet brightened from time to time by gleams of heart-worship, had held their place in the sweet valley of Elmgrove.