"'All a delusion, sister H----!' exclaimed brother L----. 'You'll wake up some time and find it so, and then you'll come back!' She looked perfectly dismayed at the very thought, as she replied, 'Come back to what? To content myself with the shadow, when I have possessed the substance? to satisfy my hunger with the husks of the stranger, when I have feasted at the continual and overflowing banquet of my Father's table! O my Methodist friends! if you could but taste for once the sweetness and fulness of that banquet, you would never cast one backward look upon what you had left, except to mourn for those who remain contented there, when they might be feasting on the bread of angels!' I confess to you, Mrs. M----, that I could not help being moved by her earnestness to wish that I was even as she is! No one can doubt her entire sincerity who listens to her. Brother L---- asked her if it could be possible that she believed all the absurdities taught by the Romish Church? She replied that she believed no absurdities, and that he had not the slightest idea as to what the Catholic Church really did teach; a tissue of absurdities had been invented by its enemies, and palmed off upon the too credulous Protestants as its teachings, when they were entirely foreign to it, and baseless misrepresentations. 'But,' she added, 'I believe all that my church really does offer to my belief, as firmly as I believe that there is a sun in the firmament of heaven!'" "Well, how strange it all is, to be sure! Now, I met Mrs. L---- the other day, and I was so provoked at the way they are going on, that I could not for my life help asking her why, in the name of common sense, if they wanted to be Romanists, they didn't all go together like sensible people, and not string along, one to-day, another to-morrow, and so on, as they do? And what do you think was her reply? 'Why, you know, Mrs. M----,' she said; 'that we read of the olden time that, "The Lord added _daily_ unto the church of such as should be saved"!' There is one thing, as you say, that cannot be doubted or denied: right or wrong, they are solemnly in earnest, and heartily sincere. You know little Kitty S---- had a terrible fit of sickness before they became Catholics, (some think her sickness hastened that event,) and has been a great sufferer ever since. Sister W---- has taken care of her through it all, and I should not wonder if she should go off on the same road. She is all taken up with it now, and justifies their course; says all the evils we have been accustomed to hear of the Catholic religion are slanders, and that if the S----s, and especially little Kitty, are not Christians of the true stamp, she does not rightly understand the gospel of Christ." CHAPTER V. REMINISCENCES OF THE PAST. After an absence of over twenty years, we returned to the pleasant village in New England which had formerly exercised over us the charm that pertains to the magic name of HOME.