In a tiny cottage, embowered and hidden by luxuriant vines and thick, swaying foliage, in a quaint little town, in a clime where the warmth and glory and brightness of the midday sun is never paled and dimmed by snow-hung clouds, where the air is heavy with the perfume of a thousand flowers, and balmy with the luscious breath of tropical fruits; where over the senses, and into the soul, steal a dreamy, blissful languor, and a strange, beautiful peace, a woman in all her glorious womanhood lay dying. And yet, death does not seem very near to that young creature who reclines on a low couch by the open window, watching and dreaming with a far away look in the shadowy eyes, and a beautiful smile upon the radiant face. A man with blue eyes, full of woman’s tenderness, and hair and beard of silvery whiteness, is standing at her side. And now the woman, turning her large, dark eyes full upon him, speaks in a low, musical voice that thrills the listener with a subtile sense of pleasure and of pain. “Dearest and best of friends, I am come very near to the place where the finite and the infinite meet, and blend together, and are lost in one. The past is vanishing like a glad dream, so brief, and yet so full of joy and completeness. All the unrest, and wild, passionate longing seem very far away from me now, such a strange, restful life has come to me. I have been thinking, perhaps it may be that some lives gather their full measure of sunshine and beauty in a very little time, while others are longer upon the way. And so, I have taken my happiness in one delicious draught, and now hold life’s empty goblet in my hands. I have been waiting for this; my fate was sealed when, a twelve-month ago, they told me that my voice was irrecoverably gone; for with it I had lost my art, and that to me was simply life. Well, it is best so. It may be in that unknown beyond, whither I am hastening, I shall find mine own again, and my soul shall be satisfied. Today I have been living again my old life, a stranger and an alien, and yet tenderly cared for by warm, loving hearts. I suppose they mourned when they discovered that their wild, willful March had flown. The remembrance of the pain I caused them has been my only regret in this new life of mine—this wonderful, grand life—and I owe it all to you, my mother’s friend and mine. After I am gone, you will send to my dear foster-parents my good-bye message. I have told them all. Of my vain struggles to find my place among the eager, restless throng in the great, busy world, with only a wild, untrained voice and an unconquerable will to aid me. Of my finding a friend, the dearest friend of my angel mother, who patiently, lovingly bore with my capricious, impetuous nature, and with lavish prodigality helped me on toward the wished for golden goal. And then how destiny pressed close upon me, with his black pinions o’ershadowing me, and the fiat was—“Thus far shalt