The sweet, long days when though trouble may come,

We bear the trouble in trustful cheer,

For ever in God is our constant home,

A refuge and shelter from grief and fear. The sweet, long days which our Father sends,

Foretaste and pattern of days to be,

In the time when the measure by days shall end,
On the fadeless shore of the Crystal Sea.

་

Our Lost.

They never quite leave us, our friends who have passed
Through the shadows of death to the sunlight above;
A thousand sweet memories are holding them fast

To the places they blessed with their presence and love.

The work which they left and the books which they read
Speak mutely, though still with an eloquence rare,
And the songs that they sung, and dear words that they said,
Yet linger and sigh on the desolate air.

And oft when alone, and as oft in the throng,

Or when evil allures us or sin draweth nigh,

A whisper comes gently, "Nay, do not the wrong,"
And we feel that our weakness is pitied on high.

In the dew-threaded morn and the opaline eve,
When the children are merry or crimsoned with sleep,

We are confronted, even as lonely we grieve,

For the thought of their rapture forbids us to weep.

We toil at our tasks in the burden and heat

Of life's passionate noon. They are folded in peace.
It is well. We rejoice that their heaven is sweet,
And one day for us will all bitterness cease.

We, too, will go home o'er the river of rest,

As the throng and the lovely before us have gone;
Our sun will go down in the beautiful west,
To rise in the glory that circles the throne.

Until then we are bound by our love and our faith
To the saints who are walking in Paradise fair.
They have passed beyond sight, at the touching of death,
But they live, like ourselves, in God's infinite care.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

The Sunshiny Household.

UNSHINE saves the world. If you want to kill a plant or a human being you need only shut either up in a crypt and rob it of the life-giving influences of heat and light. No wonder that in all ages by stairways of sunbeams our thoughts have climbed to heaven; no wonder that men, ignorantly seeking a God to worship yet knowing Him not, have found in the sun His best type and symbol. A sunshiny household is the abode of good-natured people. It is not the residence of the churl or the miser, not the home of the cross or the despotic, or the morbid, or the gloomy. Only brightness and cheer may dwell in the sunshiny house.

The young people in this home are not afraid of their father. His countenance is not frowning and repellent, his presence is no signal for silence. The mother is the queen of her realm, and where she is there can be only pleasure and delight!

In the sunshiny home the mother is not crowded out by her young folk from her true place. There are homes wherein the mother has no rest to the sole of her foot, so aggressive are the juniors. Elsie and her young friends monopolize the parlor, Louise and her lessons occupy the sitting room, Jack and his arithmetic and geography quite fill the vacant spaces in the dining room, and mamma must sit in her own chamber or go to bed. Truth to tell, her own room is not the least charming refuge in the household, for father comes there to sit in his old dressing gown and shabby slippers, Kitty and Mamie would rather stay with mother than in their own room or with their sisters, and the mother's room is the rallying place for the family in their hours of ease and enjoyment.

In the sunshiny household there are certain stock stories which everybody knows, certain anecdotes which everybody enjoys, certain allusions and reminiscences which are part of the general family fund, and which they would remember and share though they were divided by the width of the globe.

The sunshiny household is a loyal one. The family bond holds. The family stands by its several members and by its absent ones, and if there be one who has ways and must be protected that one is surrounded by the rest and most gently cared for. "The youngest Miss Archer," said my friend, "is not very bright

and has a very bad temper." "Indeed!" I replied; "why she seems to be the special favorite." "Yes, they all regret her infirmity and shield her from herself and from criticism."

In Miss Muloch's charming novel of "Mistress and Maid" there are several very admirable lessons for us, among them the devotion of Miss Leaf and Miss Hilary to the very fretful and irritable Miss Selina, who had "ways." And the bearing of the sisters with their stupid, unformed servant Elizabeth, who develops under the tutelage of love and gentleness into a treasure of skill, good sense and absolute loyalty, is worth our studying. Few women may not derive help in the management of their domestics from the perusal of this account of Elizabeth Hand and Miss Hilary Leaf.

Elizabeth did not know how to write and the bright little lady, with infinite pains, undertook to teach her- no easy task.

"She is stupid enough," Hilary confessed, after the first lesson was over, "but there is a dogged perseverance about the girl which I actually admire."

"I hope she will do her work, anyhow," said Selina, rather crossly. "I'm sure I don't see the good of wasting time over teaching Elizabeth to write when there's so much to be done in the house by one and all of us from Monday morning till Saturday night."

Selina, poor thing, was doomed always to be the stumbling-block in the peace of this family. When Hilary proposed to give Elizabeth writing lessons on Sunday, because there really was so little time through the week, this sister was much offended. She opposed the plan as usual, vehemently, and with stubborn anger, but Hilary interposed amiably:

"I might say that writing isn't Elizabeth's week-day work, and that teaching her is not exactly doing my own pleasure; but I won't creep out of the argument by a quibble. The question is, What is keeping the Sabbath-day 'holy?' I say and I stick to my opinion-that it is by making it a day of worship, a rest day—a cheerful and happy day—and by doing as much good in it as we can; and, therefore, I mean to teach Elizabeth on a Sunday.”

"She'll never understand it. She'll consider it 'work.'"

"And if she did, work is a more religious thing than idleness. I am sure I often feel that, of the two, I should be less sinful in digging potatoes in my garden, or sitting mending stockings in my parlor, than in keeping Sunday as some people do-going to church genteelly in my best clothes, eating a huge Sunday dinner, and then nodding over a good book, or taking a regular Sunday nap, till bedtime."

"Hush, child!" said Johanna, reprovingly; for Hilary's cheeks were red, and her voice angry. She was taking the hot, youthful part, which, in its hatred of shams and forms, sometimes leads and not seldom led poor Hilary-a little