CHAPTER Y. 
KANSAS HOMES. 
Mrs. T., a young lady from Boston, is dead. Just one year 
from the day of her marriage she was attired for the grave. In 
this early spring, when nature is so beautiful in young leaves and 
opening buds, and full of promise, the hopes of the young hus¬ 
band are blasted. Earth and sky wear a pall. Slowly the mourn¬ 
ers wind through the prairie, and over the high hill beyond us, to 
the lowly cemetery. We all feel that death is indeed here. It 
has, with unerring aim, stricken down the young and beautiful. 
Tenderly we would offer sympathy, realizing well that “ every 
heart knoweth its own bitterness ” in hours of bereavement, and 
shrinks from many words, though kindly spoken. 
Death to us here, away from one’s early friends, one’s old home, 
has more than its usual significance, and the tidings of one laid 
low in our little settlement awakens a thoughtfulness and a ten¬ 
derness for the bereaved and heart-stricken, which in the old homes 
we felt not, save for a dear friend. We make their sorrow, their 
utter loneliness, our own. So different is it from the olden towns, 
where life is crowded, and if, in the bustle and jostling of each 
other, one now and then falls, the crowd presses on, and the gap 
closes. Here, there is a sad feeling for many and many a day, 
and we realize that changes as sudden may await us all. 
We have showers to-day, quick, pouring showers, and in the 
intervals the sunlight seems intense with its life-giving powers. 
How nature is robing herself in the richest of green ! For hours 
I have U oked out upon her changing forms, with many crowding 
thoughts of home, of friends scattered all through New England 
dells and mountains — of friends passed onward into the spirit life, 
