And though we are to inherit eternity, yet have authority now only over the period that we have passed, with what wealth then are the aged furnished! Sweet must it be to sit with folded hands and dream life over once again. How rich we are, how happy! How dear is the old hand in ours! Years have added up the sum of all the felicity that we have known together, and carried it over to to-day. Those that have left our arms and gone out into other homes are still our own; but little sunny heads besides cluster round the knees as once before they did. Not only have we age and wisdom, but youth and gayety as well. On what light and jocund scenes we look! on what deep and dearer bliss! We see the meaning of our sorrows now, and bless them that they came. With such firm feet we have walked in the lighted way that we gaze back upon, how can we fear the Valley of the Shadow? Ah! none but they, indeed, who have threescore years and ten hived away in the past, can see the high design of Heaven in their lives, and from the wrong side of the pattern picture out the right. "So at the last shall come old age, Decrepit, as befits that stage. How else wouldst thou retire apart With the hoarded memories of thy heart, And gather all to the very least Of the fragments of life's earlier feast, Let fall through eagerness to find The crowning dainties yet behind? Ponder on the entire past, Laid together thus at last, When the twilight helps to fuse The first fresh with the faded hues, And the outline of the whole, As round Eve's shades their framework roll, Grandly fronts for once thy soul!" THE JOHNSON PARTY.