"I think," returned Ida, "that the one she wrote to papa which has never been published is much finer." "Oh, do read it to us," said Marguerite. So, unlocking a little box, Ida took out a sheet quite yellow and worn, and read it to us: "RIETI, _August 25, 1848_. "MY BELOVED FRIEND:--Bitterest tears alone can answer those words--_Pickie is dead_. My heart has all these years presaged them. I have suffered not a few sleepless hours thinking of our darling, haunted with fears never again to see his sweet, joyous face which on me, also, always looked with love and trust. But I always thought of small-pox. Now how strangely snatched from you, oh poor mother; how vain all your feverish care night and day to ward off the least possible ill from that fair frame. Oh, how pathetic it seems to think of all that was done for dear, dear Pickie to build up strong that temple from which the soul departed so easily. "You say I left him too soon to know him well, but it was not so. I had spiritual sight of the child, and knew his capacities. I hoped to be of use to him if he lived, for sweet was our communion beside the murmuring river, and when he imitated the low voices of the little brook, or telling him stories in my room, which even then he well understood. A thousand times I have thought of the time when he first said the word _Open_ to get into my room, and my heart always was open to him. He was my consolation in hours sadder than you ever guessed--my spring-flower, my cheerful lark. None but his parents could love him so well; no child, except little Waldo Emerson, had I ever so loved. In both I saw the promise of a great future: its realization is deferred to some other sphere; ere long may we follow and aid it there. "Ever sacred, my friend, be this bond between us--the love and knowledge of the child. I was his aunty; and no sister can so feel what you lose. My friend, I have never wept so for grief of my own, as now for yours. It seems to me _too_ cruel; you are resigned; you make holy profit of it; the spear has entered and forced out the heart's blood, the pure ichor follows. I know not yet how to feel so; I have not yet grieved away the bitter pang. "My mother wrote me he said sometimes he would get a boat and carry yellow flowers to his Aunty Margaret. I suppose he had not yet quite forgotten that I used to get such for him. I often thought what I should carry him from Europe--what I should tell him--what teach? He had a heart of natural poetry; he would have prized all that was best. "Oh, it is all over; and indeed this life is over for me. The conditions of this planet are not propitious to the lovely, the just, the pure; it is these that go away; it is the unjust that triumph. Let us, as you say, purify ourselves; let us labor in the good spirit here, but leave all thought of results to Eternity.