spiritual world will be known as fulness of joy? On this day of snow I found Biddy sitting before the fire, half expecting me and half doubting whether I could get there. “‘Cause, you know, you ain’t as young as you was when you came here first.” “Is any one, Biddy?” She looked up in her sly way. “Dash it, I ain’t!” By her side on the little table was a Book of Common Prayer in very large print, and her spectacles on it. “I’ve begun to read that book through,” she said, “and I’ve got as far as where it’s turned down, but there’s some on it as I’ve got to be very particular with. That there slanting print, that’s hard, that is; that ain’t so easy as the rest on it. But I’m going to read it all through for all that. You see I’ve _done_ it all before, and some of it comes easy.” “Well, Biddy, you ought to know the marriage service by this time.” “And so I do,” said Biddy, grinning. “But I never had no churchings, and I don’t hold wi’ that there _Combination_. Dash it! I never did like cussing and swearing!”[7] It turned out that Biddy had set herself the task of reading the Prayer Book through, _rubrics and all_. Very funny, wasn’t it? Pray, my reverend brethren of the clergy, have you all of you set yourselves the same task and carried it out? A little later the Lady Shepherd dropped in to look at Biddy. She found the old woman chuckling over some very mild pleasantry of mine, which she repeated in her own odd way. Suddenly she stopped. “Our doctor won’t live to ninety-four!” “Oh, Biddy, that’s more than you can tell. One thing is quite certain; if he does, you won’t be here to see him.” “Why sha’n’t I?” answers Biddy. “He’s nigh upon threescore, ain’t he? and I’m in my ninety-four. You can’t tell, neither, as I shan’t be here. The Lord knows.” * * * * * Dear old Biddy! Who _does_ know anything? It seems to me that we can none of us know anything about anything but the past. I hardly know whether we are most ignorant of the things that shall be or the things that are. Old Biddy is the last of the old-world folk that fascinated me so much with their legends and traditions and reminiscences when first I settled among them--it seems but yesterday. Old Biddy has told me all she has to tell, the gossip and the experiences of days that were not as our days. With her will pass away all that is left of a generation that was the generation of our fathers. If I leave her with a smile upon the wrinkled old face there is more often a shade of sadness that passes over my own. Other faces rise up before me; other voices seem to sound; the touch of the vanished hand--gone--gone! As I turn homeward with bowed head in the grey twilight, and muse upon those ten years that have rushed by so peacefully, and yet which have remorselessly levied their tribute and left me beggared of some who were dearer than all the jewels of the mine--