“DECEMBER 24th, 1863—CHRISTMAS EVE.—Just one year I have been Richard’s wife, and in that time I cannot recall a single moment of sadness, or a time when Richard’s voice and manner were not just as kind and loving as at first. My noble husband, how earnestly I pray that I may be worthy of him, and make him as happy as he makes me. We are in our new home now, and I cannot think of a single wish ungratified. Everything is as I like it. The furniture is of my own and Richard’s selecting, and is as good as our means would afford,—not grand and costly like Mattie’s and Jessie’s, but plain and nice, such as the furniture of a village doctor’s wife ought to be. And Richard’s mother is with us now, resting from the toils of life as nurse in the hospital. We would like so much to keep her, but she says ‘No, not till the war is over; then if my life is spared, I will come back to live and die with my children.’ “Captain Robert is coming to-night and to-morrow all take their Christmas dinner with me; I said all, meaning John and Jessie, with their four children, and Mr. Kelly, with his bride, Isabel. She has been here just a week in the parsonage, which the people bought and fitted up when they heard their clergyman was to bring his wife among them. Judge Verner, too, is there, or rather at Squire Russell’s, where the children call him grandpa, and where he seems very fond of staying. He will divide his time between his daughters, and if that apoplectic fit of which Jessie spoke ever does make its appearance, Richard will be near to attend him, for the Judge will have no other physician. ‘Homœopathy is all a humbug,’ he says, ‘but hanged if he will take any other medicine.’ He has great pride now in Mrs. Squire Russell, who certainly has developed into a wonderfully domestic woman, so that Richard even cites her for my example. Perfectly happy at home, she seldom cares to leave it, but stays contentedly with the children, to whom she is a mother and a sister both. Johnnie calls her Jessie, but to the others she is mamma to all intents and purposes, and could Margaret know, she would surely bless the whistling, hoydenish girl, who is all the world now to husband and children both. “Dear Jessie! I might write volumes in her praise, but this is the very last page of my journal, kept for so many years. The book is filled; whatever there was of romance in my girl history is within its pages, and here at its close I write myself a happy, happy woman. From the church-tower on the common the clock is striking twelve, and Richard, coming in from his long cold ride across the snow-clad hills, bids me a merry Christmas; then glancing at what I have written, he says, ‘Yes, darling, God has been very good to us. Let us love Him through the coming year more than ever we have done before.’ “With a full heart I say Amen, and so the story is done.” THE END. THE RECTOR OF ST. MARK’S.