Year: 1879

An increasing loneliness seems often to


gather over life as people pass the meridian


and begin to descend the hill toward the


setting sun. So many dear friends have


gone, so many of our kindred are here no


longer, that we become more and more soil.


tary. Looking back few years, our world


was quite other than it now is. We had
other interests, we heard other voices, we
saw our thoughts and feelings reflected in
other faces. All has imperceptibly and in
sensibly changed. Those who left us went


not all at once, but one by one. We had
time to grow adjusted to each separation


before another came to try our fortitude. If
our external circumstances have altered, the
alteration has been, in most cases, effected
gradually, so that we have not been roughly
shaken from one place to another; but ties
and bands, which we fondly fauced would
hold as long as life itself, have been loosened
by degrees.


Sometimes, on bright Spring morning,
when the windows are open, and the birds
are singing, and thousand delicate, subtle
influences are at work without, the changed
aspect of our own special horizon comes to
us like an awakening after sleep. Suddenly
there is sharp flash of recognition. 1t is
not unlike the feeling with which we have
regarded pictures of ourselves taken at diff.
ferent periods in life. The last portrait,
drawn by the cunning pencil of an artist
who has fingered lovingly over his work, re-
veals medtative face, on brow and mouth
the lines of care and pain, shadows in the
eyes, and silver frost already on the dark
hair. Friends coming in criticise it gently,
compliment complacently, and say the re
semblance is wonderful. You are mean
while thinking how strange it should be
that you, who to your own thought have re-
mained young, should have grown so much
older. There is mute, pathetic pain in
the way you try to reconcile yourself to
the person who surveys you from the wall
You never felt it as you gazed day by day
into the mirror. To convince your elf that
the artist has made no mistake, and that
you are not the victim of an illusion, you
go to the little bureau drawer where you
have sundry treasures locked away for safe
keeping. You find the ambrotype, taken
that pleasant Winter when you were eigh.
teen, and--you see somebody else. Who is
this stranger? Rounded cheeks, clustering
curls, eyes looking at you hopefully, with
the eager gladness of child going to a
show; mouth that has hard work to be
grave, because of the dimples and the
smiles; in short, that little picture in the
frame might stand for the poets ideal of
youth. 1t is your Youth and while thy
servant was busy here and there" 10 the
gay, the bright, the charming season has fled.


With it how many who once made life's
music, how many who once filled every hour,
supplied every motive for exertion, satisfied
every yearning and shared every aspiration.
The paths are growing lonely. How shall
we be comforted How shall we escape
depression ? How shall we be saved from
letting our occasional and inevitable melan-
choly oppress and trouble those about us
How shall we bear ourselves so that the
younger generation may turn to us for
counsel and sympathy, instead of away from
u.s. as from the morbid and morose


These questions apply to many women
with direct, personal interest. Their an
swers may be compressed into few SEN
tences. We must cultivate the habit of living
in other peoples lives. We must care for
the joys aud griefs of those about us. We
must be receptive to new influences, and not
be too conservative, nor too determined to
think that the past was greatly better than
the present, but accustom ourselves to the
ways of the new generation. We must keep
the young in our homes and enter into their
pleasures Young faces, light feet, girlish
laughter, song and music how they brighten
the house and cheer the heart. We must be
careful lest we grow too SET, too exacting
and too intolerant, as we reap the fruits OF
experience. May is not October and gay
lads and lassies should be pardoned if their
spirits effervesce, if they are so merry that
they sometimes seem frivolous, and if it
takes very, very little to start them off into
gales of froic and fun. Fun is medicinal,
To be quick to observe the ludcrous aspect
of things, and swift to enjoy the drol and
humorous element in what else might seem
wholly disastrous and dark, is blessed
quality indeed.


Then, too, let us habitually trust in God.
1t is one thing to preach about trust, and
another thing to practice it. To live always
peacefully, because always looking unto
Jesus, is to have good deal of heaven
mingled sweetly with our earthly experience.