There was no hope of that, however, as you know. Even if Min would have consented to such a thing, which I knew she would not have done, I should never have dreamt of asking her to write to me in opposition to her mother's wishes. It is true that I had dear little Miss Pimpernell's letters; but what could _they_ be in comparison with letters from Min?--although, of course, the kind old lady would tell me all about her, and how she looked, and what she said, in order to encourage me? It was a hard fight, a bitter struggle--that first year I passed in America; and, my memory will bear the scars of the combat, I believe, until my dying day. Still, time brought relief; and, opportunity, success--so the world wags. CHAPTER ELEVEN. "LIFE!" I hold it truth with him who sings, On one clear harp, in divers tones, That men may rise, on stepping stones Of their dead lives, to higher things! However grievous and crushing we may consider the trials and troubles of life to be, while they last, they are never altogether unbearable. The load laid upon us is seldom weighted beyond the capacity of our endurance; and then, when in course of time our ills become alleviated, and the burden we have so long borne slides off our backs, the relief we feel is proportionately all the greater, our sense of light-heartedness and mental freedom, the more intense and complete. Existence, to follow out the argument, is not always painted in shadow, its horizon obscured by dark-tinted nebulosities! On the contrary, there is ever some light infused into it, to bring out the deeper tones--"a silver lining" generally "to every cloud," as the proverb has it. So, I now experienced, as I am going to tell you. The second year of my residence in America opened much more brightly than the miserable twelvemonth I had just passed through might have led me to hope--if I could have hoped on any longer, that is! Early in the spring, when the warming breath of the power-increasing sun was slowly unloosing the chains of winter--when the rapid-running Hudson was sweeping down huge blocks and fields of ice from Albany, flooding New York Bay with a collection of little bergs, so that it looked somewhat like the Arctic effect I had seen on the Thames on that happy Christmas of the past, only on ever so much larger a scale--I received letters from England that cheered me up wonderfully, changing the whole aspect of my life. "Good news from home, good news for me, had come across the deep blue sea"--in the words of Gilmore's touching ballad; and "though I wandered far away, my heart was full of joy to-day; for, friends across the ocean's foam had sent to me good news from home"--to further paraphrase it. _Good_ news?--"glorious news," rather, I should say!