“You cannot even recollect when you were an _infant_, little one—you cannot recollect all that happened last year, or last month; how should you be able to look back through a vista of past lives that the doors of many deaths have closed behind you. Perhaps at the close of your present life the whole vista may be thrown open, and you may be able to look back to the beginning. Oh, Rosalia! I remember that in the earliest years of conscious human existence, in infancy, my mind struggled as much backward for recollection, as forward for new knowledge.” She was silent awhile, and then pursuing the train of thought, she said,—“The analogy between material and spiritual nature seems to me to be perfect in all its particulars. I never saw a human being who had not his type in the minerals, in the vegetables, in the insects, in the birds, and in the beasts.” “What is my type in each?” asked Augustus. Hagar laughed as she replied, “You, Gusty, are so much modified by education—the widow’s petted child—that the stamp is nearly effaced, or at least smeared over; however, I can fancy you ascending the scale of being by these steps: mineral, bloodstone; vegetable, mustard; bird, the turkey; animal, the mastiff. There is, with all your strength, spirit, and courage, so much homeliness, domesticity about you, dear Gusty.” “And, Sophie, dearest Sophie, tell us all her incarnations.” “An agate—the sober-hued stone of which rosaries are made—then balm, so fragrant and refreshing in sickness, then the brown partridge, then the timid fawn, then _Sophie_.” “Good! that’s like her—now yourself, Hagar.” “The ruby, pepper, the falcon, the tiger. But these are fancies.” They rode on towards the Hall. “And oh!” said Hagar, “I tell you what character I admire—a spirit that has ascended through iron ore, oak, the elephant, into the form of some square-built, strong-minded, large-hearted, great-souled man!” “Heaven send you such an one!” exclaimed Gusty, dismounting to assist them from their saddles at the gate of the Hall. A servant approached to take charge of the horses, and leaving them in his care, our little party entered the house. Sophie received them at the door and conducted them into the parlor. It was just dusk, yet Mr. Withers, exhausted by illness, had retired to bed. It is years since we have seen Sophie, and she is somewhat changed—yet what her face had lost of infantile roundness and freshness, it had gained in intelligence and interest. She took her seat smilingly at the head of the tea-table and called the young people to seat themselves around her. When they were seated and served each with a cup of tea, she informed them that she had just written, at Mr. Withers’s request, to recall Raymond to the Hall, from the Theological college at the North, the preparatory school of which had been for two years under his charge. “And is it possible that he has never been at the Hall since he left it, the summer of your marriage, Mrs. Withers?”