press them tenderly. It seemed to soothe her, when her mother would lay her head upon her pillow beside her, and take her little wasted hand in hers. And when she sang to her, in a low, trembling voice, her little favorite hymn,

"There is a happy land, far; far away,"

she lay quiet, and seemed listening with much attention, raising one little hand three times, then laying it fondly round her mother's neck. Long, during that day, did the grief-stricken mother breathe sad, melancholy music into the ears of her dying child.

Towards evening that restless state, so common in cholera infantum, came on, accompanied at every breath by a groan, which the doctor said must soon wear her out.

He gave her an opiate, hoping to relieve the distress.

Towards midnight she dropped into a little slumber, and the mother, weary with watching, retired, leaving the father and a sister, to take care of her.

It was Sabbath morning; the gray dawn was just streaking the east with the earliest beams of day, when the father, who sat a little distance from his child, thought he saw her gasp for breath. He sprang to her side, and saw too truly, that that pale visitant from the spirit land, that comes to us but once, was dealing with his child. The mother and grandmother, who had watched over her so unweariedly, soon reached the bed; but the brittle thread of life was snapped, and the pure spirit had passed away, with the pale messenger, to the spirit land. There were no loud lamentations. The mother pressed her cheeks between her hands, exclaiming,

"Oh, Emma."

Then taking her little pulseless hand in her own, seated herself beside her on the bed, calm and tearless.

The father, with his face buried in his hands, sat motionless; but no murmur escaped his lips. He had learned submission to the divine will, and was comforted in his hour of need.

And brighter, and brighter grew the beams of that holy Sabbath day. That day the dear child had loved so well. She had loved to enter the earthly temple, and join in the hymns of thanksgiving and praise that arose, like sweet incense, upon their sacred altars. And now, with the early dawning of that sacred day, she had passed forever from earth, to join the pure throng of worshippers before the throne of God. The smile of heaven was upon her face, as though the light of 

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