On Thursday last I received a dispatch that C. had arrived at Angelica, and that Lily was better. But I could not be hopeful. A leaden weight was on my heart. Friday noon brought the sad, sad tidings, and I left New York on the evening train. We go back to-night to Brooklyn with all that remains of our little lost one.

Poor C. is greatly cast down. She has parted with many dear ones, but with none so bitterly as this. The sore trial of separation from Lily which cost her so much during the summer, and especially during the last two months, was just approaching its end, and the mother's heart was already straining on the cords which should hold it but a few more days from its darling. To have that meeting so rudely precipitated, and instead of the sweet, joyous birdling she had so longed for, to find the poor little struggling sufferer, who was too far gone to speak her name, or even give one certain look of recognition-O Father, God, might not some element of bitterness have been spared from the cup? Still must we say, Not our will, but Thine, be done!

Our poor, dear Ally is still closely confined by his lameness. You would be surprised to see how contented he is, and how cheerfully he passes his days with his book and playthings, as though he had never known what out-of-door amusement was, although he now and then heaves a sigh as if he partly realized how much of the ordinary enjoyments of his age he is compelled, poor boy! to forego. I often think I see the indications of a softening and an elevation of character in him which are in advance of his years. But I cannot help feeling inexpressibly sad when I compare him with his little cousins and mates, perfect in limb and free to go and come and mingle in all activities and societies suited to their age, that he should be singled out for such an affliction. But when I remember who has done it, and that He chasten

eth whom He loveth, not only are my murmurings hushed, but I am led to hope that this seeming affliction may prove in the end an occasion for joy rather, because a means of preparing him for higher service in the kingdom of God on earth or in heaven.

I know you will write to us. Never did we need the sympathy of friends more than now. A few lines from our old home, where Lily was so well known and loved, would be especially welcome.

Give our best love to all our dear friends.

J. H. R.

ANGELICA, July 31, 1856.

MY DEAR BLISS: I have often felt like writing to you about my operations in Brooklyn, but have looked forward to a good long talk. And now matters have accumulated to such a mass that it would be absurd to essay them with pen and paper. The result of the year's labor you have seen in the catalogue I sent you; but you would hardly guess by what circuitous processes and multitudinous steps I have reached conclusions, most of which will strike you as very simple and obvious.

The first difficulty I met was in the acquiescence of all my associates in the Board and Faculty to my wishes, and their disposition to devolve on me the entire responsibility of giving shape and direction to the enterprise. This I knew would never do. For the result would be that no one would be satisfied, and I should bear the whole blame. After they got to work, the trouble, of course, was just the opposite. We had come together from all quarters, with habits adapted to half a dozen. different modes of procedure on every single point of discussion. I expected to have my own way in the end, and (if possible) the best way. So I must hear everybody, get everybody's best idea, assimilate these in a

homogeneous and workable scheme, and finally reconcile everybody else in the Faculty and Board to the result. It has been an exciting as well as laborious work, and I must say I have enjoyed it and feel some satisfaction in the measure of success (I trust) achieved. There is time enough left, however, for another class of feelings.

BROOKLYN, February 26, 1858.

MY DEAR BLISS: Your generous sheet, so full of sug gestive matter for head and heart, deserved an earlier acknowledgment, and should have received it but that I hoped I might find time soon to execute the little commissions with which you charged me. But more than a month has passed and I seem as far from the realization of that hope as ever.

The truth is, your request that I would drop loungingly into Westermann & Co.'s, run my eye leisurely over the contents of new foreign publications, judge of their adaptedness to the wants of our own country, etc. etc., struck my mind with a freshness absolutely delightful, It recalled a vision of the literary privileges and possibilities of city life, quite familiar to my unsophisticated country imagination-a beautiful dream of the past, long since lost amidst the cold and hard realities of the actual experience. Why, bless your heart, my dear fellow, has it not got through your hair yet that I am nothing more nor less than an exaggerated school-master now, with more than four hundred boys and (alas!) their twenty teachers on my hands, to manage and manoeuver, and by all sorts of motives and expedients to make diligent, faithful, and successful in their several works, and that this little job uses me all up from sunrise to sunset for five days of every week, so that I deem myself happy when

I can sit down to dine at half-past four or five o'clock, and more than happy if, after dinner, I can sit and snooze away my weariness enough to attend the "Board meeting" or "Committee meeting" or "Church meeting" or other meetings, public or private, of which the evening is sure to bring one if not two or more? And then when Saturday comes, who can tell how quick it has gone with hardly an impression made on the host of necessities accumulated through the week and previous weeks, and all clamorously calling for the promised appropriation of the leisure (!) day? The luxury of an hour in a bookstore I assure you I have not enjoyed the whole winter through, and I am a positive stranger in my own study, as a study. The Philharmonic concerts, three or four visits to picture-galleries, three literary lectures (one my own!), and an occasional sup of Beecher, comprises my entire bill of intellectual fare, the sum total of my means of intellectual growth and gratification for the past six

months.

But enough of this! I have become intensely interested in the one great experiment I am trying here, that of the school; and although my expectations are now much more moderate and limited as to its ultimate grade or rank, as well as the range of its operations, I shall feel abundantly repaid for much and hard work if I can bring it, in the character of its influence, at all up to my conception of the possibilities and duties of such an institution. Besides, I still hope for a diminution, in time, of the tax on my personal attention and care, though, thus far, every success attained has only revealed new and greater heights to be attempted, and peremptorily forbidden any relaxation of effort on pain of a defeat more mortifying in proportion to the more confident expectations of our friends.

CHAPTER IX.

BROOKLYN-DOMESTIC LIFE AND VACATION HOURS.

IT

T was needful, perhaps, that care and trial should chasten the heart of one who might have found too perfect a happiness in the fulfillment of his brightest earthly dream. In the return to the home of his boy. hood he realized all that he had hoped of glad reunion. During the ten years which he spent in Brooklyn, four of the five brothers and sisters had neighboring homes there, and in the daily mingling of their families renewed the sweet intimacies of their own childhood and youth. Many festal gatherings also brought them together. But no meetings were happier than those in which they joined every week in Sabbath-evening worship around a common altar. The hour had been set apart by our Grandfather Raymond; the elder sister, to whom he had committed the sacred trust of holding the family band together, had kept the fires burning upon the same hearthstone where he had kindled them in her home, after his own was broken up. It had been the weekly meeting-place since his death, rendered sweet and sacred by the songs which he best loved, and which are still sung there by his children's children unto the fourth generation-in answer, it would almost seem, to his constant and most fervent prayer for those who should come after him, "that they might be one."

Besides the society of the brother and sister whose reminiscences of those years in Brooklyn have been