after all these considerations have been fairly weighed, it is still desirable that men should communicate with each other far oftener than they do, on the interests which concern all men alike,--the interests, not of a temporal, but of an eternal state. A wholly unnatural reserve, the result of false education, hedges in the subject of religion. Never,--let this he a sacred and inviolable rule to you,--never, by word, tone, or manner, falsify your own nature and experience, when referring to this subject; never affect in the slightest degree an interest you do not feel; never dare to open your mouth merely because you are expected to do so,--and, my word for it, you will already possess important negative qualifications, to say the least, for conversing on the highest of all topics. I have exalted "tact" in conversation, but here I would exalt simplicity no less. Lay aside the _too many_ folds. Learn the courage to "speak right out," when you know that your heart is charged with no malice or vanity, that you should fear to speak. Have you never envied the courage of children in this respect? I have. And it has seemed to me that to "become as little children" is nowhere more urgently required than here, and that no rule would sooner make talkers out of the silent ones,--you, my friend, included. So with this, my last and best word, I take leave of you, not despairing that you will yet be able to overcome your taciturnity, if you take to heart these counsels of YOUR FRIEND. THE CHIMNEY-CORNER. VIII. THE NOBLE ARMY OF MARTYRS. When the first number of the Chimney-Corner appeared, the snow lay white on the ground, the buds on the trees were closed and frozen, and beneath the hard frost-bound soil lay buried the last year's flower-roots, waiting for a resurrection. So in our hearts it was winter,--a winter of patient suffering and expectancy,--a winter of suppressed sobs, of inward bleedings,--a cold, choked, compressed anguish of endurance, for how long and how much God only could tell us. The first paper of the Chimney-Corner, as was most meet and fitting, was given to those homes made sacred and venerable by the cross of martyrdom,--by the chrism of a great sorrow. That Chimney-Corner made bright by home firelight seemed a fitting place for a solemn act of reverent sympathy for the homes by whose darkness our homes had been preserved bright, by whose emptiness our homes had been kept full, by whose losses our homes had been enriched; and so we ventured with trembling to utter these words of sympathy and cheer to those whom God had chosen to this great sacrifice of sorrow.