It is Nelly's own fair hand, yet sadly blotted,—blotted with her tears, and blotted with yours.

----"It is all over, dear, dear Clarence! Oh, how I wish you were here to mourn with us! I can hardly now believe that our poor mother is indeed dead."

----Dead!—It is a terrible word! You repeat it with a fresh burst of grief. The letter is crumpled in your hand. Unfold it again, sobbing, and read on.

"For a week she had been failing every day; but on Saturday we thought her very much better. I told her I felt sure she would live to see you again.

"'I shall never see him again, Nelly,' said she, bursting into tears."

----Ah, Clarence, where is your youthful pride, and your strength now?—with only that frail paper to annoy you, crushed in your grasp!

"She sent for father, and taking his hand in hers, told him she was dying. I am glad you did not see his grief. I was kneeling beside her, and she put her hand upon my head, and let it rest there for a moment, while her lips moved as if she were praying.

"'Kiss me, Nelly,' said she, growing fainter: kiss me again for Clarence.'

"A little while after she died."

For a long time you remain with only that letter, and your thought, for company. You pace up and down your chamber: again you seat yourself, and lean your head upon the table, enfeebled by the very grief that you cherish still. The whole day passes thus: you excuse yourself from all companionship: you have not the heart to tell the story of your troubles to Dalton,—least of all, to Miss Dalton. How is this? Is sorrow too selfish, or too holy?

Toward nightfall there is a calmer and stronger feeling. The voice of the present world comes to your ear again. But you move away from it unobserved to that stronger voice of God in the Cataract. Great masses of angry cloud hang over the west; but beneath them the red harvest sun shines over the long reach of Canadian shore, and bathes the whirling rapids in splendor. You stroll alone over the quaking bridge, and under the giant trees of the Island, to the edge of the British Fall. You go out to the little shattered tower, and gaze down, with sensations that will last till death, upon the deep emerald of those awful masses of water.

It is not the place for a bad man to ponder; it is not the atmosphere for foul thoughts, or weak ones. A man is never better than when he has the humblest sense of himself: he is never so unlike the spirit of Evil as when his pride is utterly vanished. You linger, looking upon the stream of fading sunlight that plays across the rapids, and down into the shadow of the depths below, lit up with their clouds of spray;—yet farther down, your sight swims upon the black eddying masses, with white ribbons streaming across their glassy surface; and your dizzy eye fastens upon the frail cockle-shells—their stout oarsmen dwindled to pygmies—that dance like atoms upon the vast chasm, or like your own weak resolves upon the whirl of Time.

Your thought, growing broad in the view, seems to cover the whole area of life: you set up your affections and your duties; you build hopes with fairy scenery, and away they all go, tossing like the relentless waters to the deep gulf that gapes a hideous welcome! You sigh at your weakness of heart, or of endeavor, and your sighs float out into the breeze, that rises ever from the shock of the waves, and whirl, empty-handed, to Heaven. You avow high purposes, and clench them with round utterance; and your voice, like a sparrow's, is caught up in the roar of the fall, and thrown at you from the cliffs, and dies away in the solemn thunders of nature. Great thoughts of life come over you—of its work and destiny—of its affections and duties, and roll down swift—like the river—into the deep whirl of doubt and danger. Other thoughts, grander and stronger, like the continuing rush of waters, come over you, and knit your purposes together with their weight, and crush you to exultant tears, and then leap, shattered and broken, from the very edge of your intent into mists of fear!

The moon comes out, and gleaming through the clouds, braids its light fantastic bow upon the waters. You feel calmer as the night deepens. The darkness softens you; it hangs—like the pall that shrouds your mother's corpse—low and heavily to your heart. It helps your inward grief with some outward show. It makes the earth a mourner; it makes the flashing water-drops so many attendant mourners. It makes the Great Fall itself a mourner, and its roar a requiem!

The pleasure of travel is cut short. To one person of the little company of fellow-voyagers you bid adieu with regret; pride, love, and hope point toward her, while all the gentler affections stray back to the broken home. Her smile of parting is very gracious, but it is not, after all, such a smile as your warm heart pines for.

Ten days after, you are walking toward the old homestead with such feelings as it never called up before. In the days of boyhood there were triumphant thoughts of the gladness and the pride with which, when grown to the stature of manhood, you would come back to that little town of your birth. As you have bent with your dreamy resolutions over the tasks of the cloister life, swift thoughts have flocked on you of the proud step, and prouder heart, with which you would one day greet the old acquaintances of boyhood; and you have regaled yourself on the jaunty manner with which you would meet old Dr. Bidlow, and the patronizing air with which you would address the pretty, blue-eyed Madge.

It is late afternoon when you come in sight of the tall sycamores that shade your home; you shudder now, lest you may meet any whom you once knew. The first keen grief of youth seeks little of the sympathy of companions: it lies—with a sensitive man—bounded within the narrowest circles of the heart. They only who hold the key to its innermost recesses can speak consolation. Years will make a change;—as the Summer grows in fierce heats, the balminess of the violet banks of Spring is lost in the odors of a thousand flowers;—the heart, as it gains in age, loses freshness, but wins breadth.

----Throw a pebble into the brook at its source, and the agitation is terrible, and the ripples chafe madly their narrowed banks;—throw in a pebble when the brook has become a river, and you see a few circles, widening and widening and widening, until they are lost in the gentle every-day murmur of its life!

You draw your hat over your eyes, as you walk toward the familiar door: the yard is silent; the night is falling gloomily; a few katydids are crying in the trees. The mother's window, where at such a season as this it was her custom to sit watching your play, is shut, and the blinds are closed over it. The honeysuckle, which grew over the window, and which she loved so much, has flung out its branches carelessly; and the spiders have hung their foul nets upon its tendrils.

And she, who made that home so dear to your boyhood, so real to your after-years,—standing amid all the flights of your youthful ambition, and your paltry cares (for they seem paltry now), and your doubts, and anxieties and weaknesses of heart, like the light of your hope—burning ever there under the shadow of the sycamores,—a holy beacon, by whose guidance you always came to a sweet haven, and to a refuge from all your toils,—is gone, gone forever!

The father is there indeed,—beloved, respected, esteemed; but the boyish heart, whose old life is now reviving, leans more readily and more kindly into that void where once beat the heart of a mother.

Nelly is there,—cherished now with all the added love that is stricken off from her who has left you forever. Nelly meets you at the door.

----"Clarence!"

----"Nelly!"

There are no other words; but you feel her tears as the kiss of welcome is given. With your hand joined in hers, you walk down the hall into the old, familiar room,—not with the jaunty college step,—not with any presumption on your dawning manhood,—oh, no,—nothing of this!

Quietly, meekly, feeling your whole heart shattered, and your mind feeble as a boy's, and your purposes nothing, and worse than nothing,—with only one proud feeling you fling your arm around the form of that gentle sister,—the pride of a protector,—the feeling—"I will care for you now, dear Nelly!"—that is all. And even that, proud as it is, brings weakness.

You sit down together upon the lounge; Nelly buries her face in her hands, sobbing.

"Dear Nelly!" and your arm clasps her more fondly.

There is a cricket in the corner of the room, chirping very loudly. It seems as if nothing else were living,—only Nelly, Clarence, and the noisy cricket. Your eye on the chair where she used to sit; it is drawn up with the same care as ever beside the fire.

"I am so glad to see you, Clarence," says Nelly, recovering herself; there is a sweet, sad smile now And sitting there beside you, she tells you of it all,—of the day, and of the hour,—and how she looked,—and of her last prayer, and how happy she was.

"And did she leave no message for me, Nelly?"

"Not to forget us, Clarence; but you could not!"

"Thank you, Nelly. And was there nothing else?"

"Yes, Clarence,—to meet her one day!"

You only press her hand.

Presently your father comes in: he greets you with far more than his usual cordiality. He keeps your hand a long time, looking quietly in your face, as if he were reading traces of some resemblance that had never struck him before.

The father is one of those calm, impassive men, who shows little upon the surface, and whose feelings you have always thought cold. But now there is a tremulousness in his tones that you never remember observing before. He seems conscious of it himself, and forbears talking. He goes to his old seat, and after gazing at you a little while with the same steadfastness as at first, leans forward, and buries his face in his hands.

From that very moment you feel a sympathy and a love for him, that you have never known until then. And in after-years, when suffering or trial come over you, and when your thoughts fly as to a refuge to that shattered home, you will recall that stooping image of the father,—with his head bowed, and from time to time trembling convulsively with grief,—and feel that there remains yet by the household fires a heart of kindred love and of kindred sorrow!

Nelly steals away from you gently, and stepping across the room, lays her hand upon his shoulder with a touch that says, as plainly as words could say it,—"We are here, father!"

And he rouses himself,—passes his arm around her,—looks in her face fondly,—draws her to him, and prints a kiss upon her forehead.

"Nelly, we must love each other now more than ever."

Nelly's lips tremble, but she cannot answer; a tear or two go stealing down her cheek.

You approach them; and your father takes your hand again with a firm grasp,—looks at you thoughtfully,—drops his eyes upon the fire, and for a moment there is a pause;—"We are quite alone now, my boy!"

----It is a Broken Home!