THE FARMER'S DAUGHTER. 1 67 



honest thoughts and prayers ; short ones, but they have 

 their efficacy ! Her dreams are so chaste that she dare 

 tell them. Only a Friday's dream is her superstition. 

 That she conceals. Thus lives she, and her only care is 

 that she may die in spring-time, to have store of flowers 

 stuck upon her winding-sheet." 



I need not deny that I thought of that description when 

 I was standing by the grave in the thicket. How could 

 I help thinking of it ? Perhaps it had to do with my im- 

 aginations also. Thus they went on. 



The farmer's daughter grew up, beautiful and beloved. 

 In the morning she saw the sun rise from the sea, and her 

 young thoughts went wandering to the far East, and she 

 remembered the story of the Passion. In the evening, 

 tired with her clay's work, she saw the starlight on the 

 water, and drank in the beauty of the night as one by one 

 the stars went down the sky, and by the intuition of youth, 

 not unaided by some sorrowful experiences even in her 

 young life, she learned that the bright and beautiful things 

 of earth go out one by one, but that to the patient watch- 

 er, even in cloudy nights, there will come other visions of 

 beauty, other stars to be bright and shining in their turn, 

 and that there is a to-morrow, when the blue will be as 

 beautiful and the stars as clear. Patience is the lesson 

 of the star-watchers. The old Chaldean learned it when 

 the stars were younger than now. I have seen the Bed- 

 ouin, lying prone on the desert sand, studying the unceas- 

 ing revolution of the sky, and learning the same lesson. 

 Why might not Faith, the young girl in Connecticut, learn 

 it as well ? This is all a fancy story you know, but let us 

 give rein to fancy. She grew up exceeding fair and beau- 

 tiful. The sunshine kissed her cheek only to give it the 

 bloom of a rose. Her eye borrowed the color of the 



