And I says, “Tongue can't tell, Tirzah Ann, how your ma's heart does ache for her. And,” says I, “if I knew myself, I had got to die and leave a boy in the world with such temptations round him, and such a chin on him, why, I don't know what I should do, and what I shouldn't do.” And says Tirzah Ann, “That is jest the way I feel, mother;” and we both of us wiped our eyes. But I held firm before her, and reminded her every time, of what she knew already,--“that there was One who was strong, who comforted her in her hour of need, and He would watch over the boy.” And sometimes she would be soothed for a little while, and sometimes she wouldn't. Wall, this day, as I said, she had worried and worried and worried. And at last I had soothed her down, real soothed. And she asked me before I went down-stairs, for a poem, a favorite one of hers,--“The Celestial Country.” And I gin it to her. And she said I might shet the door, and she would read a spell, and she guessed she should drop to sleep. And as I was goin' out of the room, she called me back to hear a verse or two she particularly liked, about the “endless, ageless peace of Syon:”-- “True vision of true beauty, Sweet cure of all distrest.” And I stood calm, and heard her with a smooth, placid face, though I knew my pies was a scorchin' in the oven, for I smelt 'em. I did well by Cicely. [Illustration: SAMANTHA LISTENING TO CICELY.] After she finished it, I told her it was perfectly beautiful, and I left her feelin' quite bright; and there wuzn't but one of my pies spilte, and I didn't care if it wuz. I wuzn't goin' to have her feelin's hurt, pies or no pies. After I got my pies out, I went into my nearest neighbor's on a errent, tellin' Josiah to stay in Thomas Jefferson's room, just acrost from Cicely's, so's if she wanted any thing, he could get it for her. I wuzn't gone over a hour, and, when I went back, I went up-stairs the first thing; and I found Cicely a cryin,' though there was a softer, more contented look in her eyes than I had seen there for a long time. And I says, “What is the matter, Cicely?” And she says,-- “Oh! if I had been a better woman, I could have seen my mother! she has been here!” “Why, Cicely!” says I. “Here, take some of this jell.” But she put it away, and says in a sort of a solemn, happy tone,-- “She has been here!” She said it jest as earnest and serene as I ever heard any thing said; and there was a look in her eyes some as there wuz when she come home from her aunt Mary's, and told me “she almost wished her aunt had died while she was there, because she felt that her mother would be the angel sent from heaven to convey her aunt's soul home--and she could have seen her.” There was that same sort of deep, soulful, sad, and yet happy look to her eyes, as she repeated,--