"Do not ask me to do that which my strength will not permit. There are many reasons why I ought not to come here again; and, moreover, my work calls me hence, to a distant field. My physical strength seems to be ebbing fast, and my vines are not all purple with mellow fruit. Some clusters, thank God! are fragrant, ripe, and ready for the wine-press, when the Angel of the Vintage comes to gather them in; but my work is only half done. Not until my fingers clasp white flowers under a pall, shall it be said of me, 'Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep.' In coelo quies! The German idea of death is to me peculiarly comforting and touching, 'Heimgang'--GOING HOME. Ah, sir! humanity ought to be homesick; and in thinking of that mansion beyond the star-paved pathway of the sky, whither Jesus has gone to prepare our places, we children of earth should, like the Swiss, never lose our home-sickness. Our bodies are of the dust--dusty, and bend dustward; but our souls floated down from the sardonyx walls of the Everlasting City, and brought with them a yearning maladie du pays, which should help them to struggle back. Sometimes I am tempted to believe that the joys of this world are the true lotos, devouring which, mankind glory in exile, and forget the Heimgang. Oh! indeed, 'here we have no continuing city, but seek one to come.' Heimgang! Thank God! going home for ever!" The splendor of the large eyes seemed almost unearthly as she looked out over the fields, where in summers past the shout of the merry reapers rose like the songs of Greek harvesters to Demeter! Nay, nay, as a hymn of gratitude and praise to Him who "feedeth the fowls of the air," and maketh the universe a vast Sarepta, in which the cruse never faileth the prophets of God. Edna sat silent for some time, with her slender hands folded on her lap, and the pastor heard her softly repeating, as if to her own soul, those lines on "Life": "A cry between the silences, A shadow-birth of clouds at strife With sunshine on the hills of life; Between the cradle and the shroud, A meteor's flight from cloud to cloud!" Several hours later, when Mr. Leigh returned to the study, he found Edna singing some of the minister's favorite Scotch ballads; while Gertrude rested on the lounge, half propped on her elbow, and leaning forward to dangle the cord and tassel of her robe de chambre within reach of an energetic little blue-eyed kitten, which, with its paws in the air, rolled on the carpet, catching at the silken toy. The governess left the piano, and resumed her mending of the contents of the clothes-basket.