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life, her name registered among earth's little children, Blanche Page, the mother's face, came the baptism of death, the kiss of the immortals; her name written among the angels, registered among the Church of the innumerable first-born.

How hard it was, and it seemed so sad and cruel, to tear away that child from her long-lost, new-found mother, so soon to be buried forever from her earthly sight.

In Sorrow's great Greenwood, Destiny has reared another mute, moveless marble. Through Grief's gloomy, drooping shadow, we read the inscription:

"Private Arthur Page, shot through the heart, — dead.

"Blanche Page, stricken in the battle of life, - pierced through the heart by Grief's keen arrow.

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Sharper than stab of sword, surer than flight of bullet, is Grief's unfailing shaft."

I ride through Greenwood again with Blanche Page. I pass by that plain slab, where the myrtle is growing, fresh roses are in bloom; and there, standing and leaning over close where the word "Mother" is carved, is Ernest Heart, and there are fresh violets lying on that grave.

Good, noble, constant man! I can't help feeling sympathy

and admiration for such a true soul.

'Tis Tuesday. Blanche Page was buried on Saturday. I have been out. I saw Ernest Heart walking with a young lady, beautiful, graceful, and elegantly dressed. She is about my own age. She does n't look at anything or anybody. She seems absorbed in his conversation. I know by his look, voice, manner, that she is no cousin, no sister. He has neither cousin nor sister. His manner is not brotherly nor cousinly. She has his arm. I hear him call her Nethelyn; yes, that is her name, her first name.

He walks slowly, selects the shadiest part of the walk. How tenderly he seems to guide her; yes, guide is the only word I can think of. I wonder where they are going. I hear him say, "Mr. Dodge lives here." He is telling her about the houses; so I suppose she is a stranger. But I won't walk behind them any longer. I wonder who she is I wonder. yes,

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CHAPTER XX.

66 BANS PADE."

THEY are marching along, they are marching along, with noble-looking General Arlington at their head. Nothing can keep Annie's great-souled, large-hearted father from answering the roll-call of duty. As they pass on, there are hearty cheers and loud huzzas. Best-beloved sons, kindest brothers, truest lovers, and fondest husbands are marching out of sight of weeping, worshipping friends.

The morning is delightful, the band is playing "Dixie," handkerchiefs wave, hands are kissed, tears kept back. They are out of sight gone! About their honored heads are woven dreams of deathless fame, and endless laurels; but through all these wreaths of bay and halos of glory, I see them marching still, many of them, into the long, dark halls of Eternity, and joining the bands of the unseen immortals. It may be adieu to all those noble hearts, but I cannot say au revoir; for through all the pomp and ceremony, the music and the march, gleams the inevitable fact, stern and solemn: they go to kill or be killed; and their mission is tears, if not to my eyes, to other bereaved women's eyes.

Annie Milleen travelled night and day with her little Blanche, to get home in time to see her father once more. She came the night before he left, and that morning they were all at the window as he went by. Bridget left her dusting, and Margaret her dishes, to stand at the door and see them pass; and by their side stood Mara, little Blanche's nurse, forgetting everything but the music and the marching and the waving banners. Little Blanche Milleen, unnoticed for once in her little life, crept down from her chair, and went out into the hail, to "Dis danpa once more." She had hardly been out of his arms since she came. Bridget, in her hurry and excitement, had left her dusting-brush and pan on the top of the high stone steps, and the child tripped and fell all the way down.

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She lay at the bottom, stunned, stiff, and still. The notes of "Dixie" had hardly died away from their ears. Blanche was dead! As Annie heard the fall and looked at that little bruised head, she shrieked out, "I left her alone; I never left her unwatched before! I have killed my child!" and she swooned away. Two days have passed. I am going down-street to get some leggings for my little Blanche. I see Nelson Milleen crossing. the street. He meets me, grasps my hand, says nothing. At last asks me to come and see Annie. She has lain in that unconscious state two days. She may die, unless she is aroused from this death-like stupor! If she could only shed tears!

I go around to the Arlington's, where never before Grief had left his lightest touch, his daintiest tread. I enter the parlor, where statuary, painting, rosewood, marble, art, and taste, have made everything bewitching, bright, and beautiful. In the corner of the parlor is a beautiful full-length statue of little Blanche, which Mr. Graef, the German sculptor, has so beautifully chiselled in marble; but in yonder rosewood crib lies a mute, marble face, to which Death, the last chiseller, has given his final touch. As I kiss the fair brow and lay the white rose-buds in the little folded hands, I say through the blinding tears, "If Blanche Page could have lived to have spoken to her child only once! that child so mourned, so longed for! but it was too late. If Annie could have only clung to this little lost lamb that fatal moment of that fatal morning, this little voice would not be hushed, these eyes not sealed in their dreamless sleep!" "It might have been," is life's endless tragic dirge, its inevitable sad refrain. Poor Annie has only spoken or opened her eyes once, and then she moaned out again, "I have killed my child." "It might have been," is the wail of the wide world's aching, restless heart.

Blanche Milleen was buried, and Annie knew nothing of it; she gave no good-by kiss, shed no tears on the little closed coffin-lid. My little Blanche Page is just the age of little Blanche Milleen, and her features and wavy brown hair are strangely and strikingly like hers.

I go home, dress my little Blanche in a light blue merino dress, and take her with me to the Arlingtons. I go softly up into Annie's room; Blanche has a little bunch of white rose-buds in her hands. After awhile, Annie sighs, opens her eyes, as if awaking from some dream, and calls," Blanche!"

I put my little Blanche by her bedside. Annie starts, puts her hand on the child's head, and says, "Is my little Blanche come back again?"

Nelson walks softly out, gets his little Blanche's doll, and comes and puts it in the child's hands. Annie lies still, gazing at her, as the tears roll down her face.

Blanche Page looks up into Annie's face and says, "Don't try, lady; Bans Pade take care of oo."

Annie threw her arms round Blanche's neck, and Nelson gently lifts the child up on the bed by her side. Annie is not quite herself yet; she seems in some way to associate this child with her little lost darling. We think she believes it is really Blanche, as the child says, putting her arms about Annie's neck again, "Don't try, lady; Bans Pade take care of oo.”

Nelson stands by the window; I see the tears coming; the sweet, soothing child-voice has deeply moved and thrilled him. If he were only a woman I could steal around behind him and clasp him to my heart!

But I sit still, and my heart clasps his great soul in sympathy. It is his only hope for Annie that this little one will nestle in her aching, lonely heart, in little Blanche's place. As I look at Nelson Milleen, I can't help thinking, Why are not more men like you, with your ready tact, wise head, and warm heart? Your strong faith is a great rock of shelter in earth's weary land. Why do some men so nearly reach the type divine, and others fall so far below the nature human? There are some flowers you can't pass without getting a breath of perfume: so there are balmy souls; you can't meet or approach them, but you have better, sweeter thoughts. "Nothing is expedient that is not right, and the Right is always expedient," is Nelson Milleen's motto. He would follow a duty to the cannon's mouth, run out of breath to catch it. I have never forgotten hearing John Trap say once, "There's no use in running yourself out of breath to catch a duty." Nelson never seemed to think of himself first. Thanks for the few balmy souls that soothe and solace, and so often save us from sudden, utter despair.

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You and I, reader, have met some mosquito souls, I call them. As you glide by them on the sea of life, they give you a sting and bite, and, if possible, extract the very life-blood of your innocent joy, and rob brief peace of its quiet rest. They bring to light the sacred grief of your suffering soul, hunt out hidden faults, and explore the labyrinth of your past life to drag out and torture half-forgotten, repented follies, and bombard with harshest words the castle of your sensitive soul. Earnestly we do pray to be delivered from such biting, stinging, battering spirits,

and whose sole mission is to prove that our words, deeds, motives, whole conduct, is ignorantly stupid or wilfully wrong. They may have lordly forms, but their souls are the smallest specimens of entomology. They have some rudimental vestige of a heart, and plenty of spiritual, movable antennæ, to feel sharp and quick for people's faults. They belong to the third class, the insecta tribe of souls, and somewhere between the sharp angle of their mouth and eyes are invisible, widely-extended organs of touch and hearing. These insecta souls seem to be created to say, know, and do the very things you don't want to have them. If there is a hopeless sorrow garnered up in the heart, they'll tirelessly search and drag it out in the broadest light, bring it before the court of inquiry, catechise, cross-examine, and torture it. And so the best of us are stung, exasperated, angered, by these mosquito people, who haunt every city and infest every town. No famine or fall-frost ever starves or freezes them out. The dearest secret is told, our right motives tortured, our wrong immortalized, and those who love us best secretly told, “If you knew what I do, you would n't think her so near perfection."

The tallest, grandest soul that nears closest Duty's clear skies, is often stung most. As I saw one day on the most beautiful painting at the Art-Union, away up on the top of its golden glory, a mosquito had flown; I was glad, as I saw the insect rest there, that it had no power to sting divine art, though it might tease and trouble nature.

So I found my Blanche, so I resigned her; and only a week after that first morning she stood by Annie Milleen's bed, I went in as she sat on her little chair, singing dolly to sleep in its pretty new cradle. It is Blanche's dolly, and Annie says the little maiden is happy as long as dolly's quiet head can be laid by her side every night in the little crib. As she rocks and comforts

her dolly, I say, "What is your name, child?" "Bans Pade

Muddeen," she says, as Nelson comes in with a new carriage he has bought for dolly.

Nelson is one that will never put a child off with those meaningless, everlasting, discouraging by-and-byes, one of these days, and I'll see about it. To-day's gingerbread is better to a child - than to-morrow's frosted pound-cake.

The blithe songs of that pretty bird in childhood's eager hand is so much sweeter than the thousand unseen, unheard birds in the promised bush! Little Blanche's heart is like a sky without a cloud, from zenith to horizon all blue. The only pure, cloud