2:30 P.M.—It is the time appointed. The funeral has begun. Four hundred miles away, but I can see it all, just as if I were there. The scene is the library in the Langdon homestead. Jean’s coffin stands where her mother and I stood, forty years ago, and were married; and where Susy’s coffin stood thirteen years ago; where her mother’s stood five years and a half ago; and where mine will stand after a little time. FIVE O’CLOCK.—It is all over. When Clara went away two weeks ago to live in Europe, it was hard, but I could bear it, for I had Jean left. I said _we_ would be a family. We said we would be close comrades and happy—just we two. That fair dream was in my mind when Jean met me at the steamer last Monday; it was in my mind when she received me at the door last Tuesday evening. We were together; WE WERE A FAMILY! the dream had come true—oh, precisely true, contentedly, true, satisfyingly true! and remained true two whole days. And now? Now Jean is in her grave! In the grave—if I can believe it. God rest her sweet spirit! THE TURNING-POINT OF MY LIFE I If I understand the idea, the _Bazar _invites several of us to write upon the above text. It means the change in my life’s course which introduced what must be regarded by me as the most _important _condition of my career. But it also implies—without intention, perhaps—that that turning-point _itself _was the creator of the new condition. This gives it too much distinction, too much prominence, too much credit. It is only the _last _link in a very long chain of turning-points commissioned to produce the cardinal result; it is not any more important than the humblest of its ten thousand predecessors. Each of the ten thousand did its appointed share, on its appointed date, in forwarding the scheme, and they were all necessary; to have left out any one of them would have defeated the scheme and brought about _some other_ result. I know we have a fashion of saying “such and such an event was the turning-point in my life,” but we shouldn’t say it. We should merely grant that its place as LAST link in the chain makes it the most _conspicuous _link; in real importance it has no advantage over any one of its predecessors. Perhaps the most celebrated turning-point recorded in history was the crossing of the Rubicon. Suetonius says: Coming up with his troops on the banks of the Rubicon, he halted for a while, and, revolving in his mind the importance of the step he was on the point of taking, he turned to those about him and said, “We may still retreat; but if we pass this little bridge, nothing is left for us but to fight it out in arms.”