Patience; accomplish thy labour; accomplish thy work of affection!

Sorrow and silence are strong, and patient endurance is godlike,

Therefore accomplish thy labour of love, till the heart is made godlike.

Purified, strengthened, perfected, and rendered more worthy of heaven!"

Cheered by the good man's words, Evangeline laboured and waited.

Still in her heart she heard the funeral dirge of the

ocean,

But with its sound there was mingled a voice that whispered, "Despair not!"

THE SISTER OF MERCY.

In that delightful land which is washed by the Dela ware's waters,

Guarding in sylvan shades the name of Penn the apostle,

Stands on the banks of its beautiful stream the city he founded.

There all the air is balm, and the peach is the emblem of beauty,

And the streets still re-echo the names of the trees of the forest,

As if they fain would appease the Dryads whose haunts they molested.

There from the troubled sea had Evangeline landed,

an exile,

Finding among the children of Penn a home and a

Gabriel was not forgotten. Within her heart was his image,

Clothed in the beauty of love and youth, as last she beheld him,

Only more beautiful made by his deathlike silence and absence.

Into her thoughts of him time entered not, for it was

not.

Over him years had no power; he was not changed, but transfigured;

He had become to her heart as one who is dead, and

not absent;

Patience and abnegation of self, and devotion to others,

This was the lesson a life of trial and sorrow had taught her.

So was her love diffused, but, like to some odorous spices,

Suffered no waste nor loss, though filling the air with

aroma.

Other hope had she none, nor wish in life, but to

follow

Meekly, with reverent steps, the sacred feet of her Saviour.

Thus many years she lived as a Sister of Mercy; frequenting

Lonely and wretched roofs in the crowded lanes of

the city,

Where distress and want concealed themselves from

the sunlight,

Where disease and sorrow in garrets langu ished neglected.

Night after night, when the world was asleep, as the watchman repeated

Loud, through the gusty streets, that all was well in the city,

High at some lonely window he saw the light of her

taper.

Day after day, in the gray of the dawn, as slow through the suburbs

Plodded the German farmer, with flowers and fruits for the market,

Met he that meek, pale face, returning home from its watchings.

THE DEATH-BED MEETING.

[A pestilence has fallen on the city, and Evangeline, the Sister of Mercy, works in the hospital among the sick and dying.]

Many a languid head, upraised as Evangeline entered, Turned on its pillow of pain to gaze while she passed, for her presence

Fell on their hearts like a ray of the sun on the walls of a prison.

And, as she looked around, she saw how Death, the consoler,

Laying his hand upon many a heart, had healed it

for ever.

Many familiar forms had disappeared in the night

time;

Vacant their places were, or filled already by strangers.

Suddenly, as if arrested by fear or a feeling of wonder, Still she stood, with her colourless lips apart, while a shudder

Ran through her frame, and, forgotten, the flowerets dropped from her fingers,

And from her eyes and cheeks the light and bloom of the morning.

Then there escaped from her lips a cry of such terrible anguish,

That the dying heard it, and started up from their

pillows.

On the pallet before her was stretched the form of an old man.

Long, and thin, and gray were the locks that shaded his temples;

But, as he lay in the morning light, his face for a

moment

Seemed to assume once more the forms of its earlier

manhood;

So are wont to be changed the faces of those that are dying.

Hot and red on his lips still burned the flush of the

fever,

As if life, like the Hebrew, with blood had besprinkled its portals.

That the Angel of Death might see the sign, and pass over.

Motionless, senseless, dying, he lay, and his spirit exhausted

Seemed to be sinking down through infinite depths in the darkness,

Darkness of slumber and death, for ever sinking and sinking.

Then through those realms of shade, in multiplied reverberations,