She said nothing to me about the anniversary, and, though it has been in my thoughts all the time, I said nothing to her. I thought that she would shut herself up for the day, and was rather surprised that she was about as usual, busily at work, chatting with me, and playing with Faith. Just after tea, she went away alone for a time, and came back a little quiet, but that was all. I was for some reason impressed with the feeling that she kept the day in memory, not so much as the day of her mourning, as of his release. Longing to do something for her, yet not knowing what to do, I went into the garden while she was away, and, finding some carnations, that shone like stars in the dying light, I gathered them all, and took them to her room, and, filling my tiny porphyry vase, left them on the bracket, under the photograph of Uncle Forceythe that hangs by the window. When she found them, she called me, and kissed me. “Thank you, dear,” she said, “and thank God too, Mary, for me. That he should have been happy,--happy and out of pain, for three long beautiful years! O, think of that!” When I was in her room with the flowers, I passed the table on which her little Bible lay open. A mark of rich ribbon--a black ribbon--fell across the pages; it bore in silver text these words:-- “_Thou shalt have no other gods before me._” 20th. “I thank thee, my God, the river of Lethe may indeed flow through the Elysian Fields,--it does not water the Christian’s Paradise.” Aunt Winifred was saying that over to herself in a dreamy undertone this morning, and I happened to hear her. “Just a quotation, dear,” she said, smiling, in answer to my look of inquiry, “I couldn’t originate so pretty a thing. _Isn’t_ it pretty?” “Very; but I am not sure that I understand it.” “You thought that forgetfulness would be necessary to happiness?” “Why,--yes; as far as I had ever thought about it; that is, after our last ties with this world are broken. It does not seem to me that I could be happy to remember all that I have suffered and all that I have sinned here.” “But the last of all the sins will be as if it had never been. Christ takes care of that. No shadow of a sense of guilt can dog you, or affect your relations to Him or your other friends. The last pain borne, the last tear, the last sigh, the last lonely hour, the last unsatisfied dream, forever gone by; why should not the dead past bury its dead?” “Then why remember it?” “‘Save but to swell the sense of being blest.’ Besides, forgetfulness of the disagreeable things of this life implies forgetfulness of the pleasant ones. They are all tangled together.” “To be sure. I don’t know that I should like that.”