The Melancholy Heart; or, The Child to Whom Nobody Was Kind

How merrily the birds sing! How wildly the fishes jump in the clear black river! How happily the flowers nod their heads, as if approvingly! How blithely the clouds in the blue sky play at hare and hounds with each other! How pleasantly the sea smacks his great foaming lips on the sloping sand! How slyly the sunbeams peep through the green leaves, and run like lizards down the bark of the trees, and jump into the eyes of children and sparkle there! How the cows lie down on the soft grass, and look so wonderfully contented, that we cannot help laughing at them! No wonder the girls on the village green are singing. The beautiful evening has got into their heads, and made them dance on the green, as the gnats are dancing in the air. The very gnats blow their trumpets, like the proud boys in the village band, because they are so self-satisfied. Nature always looks most pleased with herself in the evening.

All this made Rosamond frown, as she sat by herself on the common. The golden gorse smelled like pine-apples, or apricots, or nectarines, she could not tell which. But even the sweet smell made her cross. Rosamond was not a nice child. But, like all children, she only wanted a verv little to make her nice. If we could have got into her heart, we should have seen that it was not quite the right shape. It was deep enough; but too narrow at the bottom. We should have seen a black streak also running across it. She was a melancholy child.

Her father had been a soldier, and had spent most of his life in foreign lands. Her mother "was almost always with him. So Rosamond had been put to board at a school, when she was too young to have left the shelter of home. She hardly remembered her father and mother; and now they were both dead. Nobody had ever loved Rosamond, and Rosamond had never loved anybody.

I was very wrong to say that; for God loved her most tenderly; and her Guardian Angel loved her also, as our tale will show. Indeed her Guardian Angel was the only creature who o could, ever keep his temper with her. She had once had a little dog, and he used to wag his tail, and frisk round her, and fetch sticks and stones to her. But she was so snappish with him, that he gave it all up as useless, and took to getting into a corner, out of her way, and sleeping all the day long. It always tells well for children, when animals are fond of them.

Have you begun already to hate little Rosamond? Well then, you are just doing wiiat her good Angel did not do. You will be lucky if your Angel does for you what Rosamond's Angel did for her.

how those sea-birds are shrieking round the ship, and how cold and gray the dreadful water looks, and the sun has set in horrible black clouds with edges as if they had been stained with blood! Thump come the great waves against the side of the ship. The wind wails with piteous shrill cries among the ropes, as if they were murdering bahies up at the top of the masts. Mutter, mutter, mutter, growls the distant thunder. Wash, wash, wash, sounds the ship as it staggers among the great, cold, lead-coloured billows.

Poor Rosamond! her cousins were tired enough of the disagreeable orphan; and so they had shipped her off to an aunt in Australia, with out any notice but the letter which went by the same ship. They had put her under the care of the captain. It was an unmerciful thing to do, and they will never have a blessing again as long as they live. Nevertheless they did it. When men are impatient with children, it is extremely displeasing to the Angels; and the best thing that can happen to a man when he has offended the Angels is either to make peace with them, or to lie down and die; for no good comes of a man who is not friends with the Angels. Do not think it strange if I say, that the dear Angels sometimes remind us of those glorious great dogs, who are so rough with men and so gentle with children.

Poor Rosamond! the mischief about her was not so much ill-temper, as melancholy. She was ill-tempered certainly, but then it was her melancholy that made her so. She always looked at the dark side of every thing. And she not only looked at it, but she liked it best. She could not bear the bright side of things. But then nobody had ever said a kind word to her, and very few had ever done her a kind action. Besides which she w^as an extremely ugly child. No wonder then that she was silent and sullen.

When the ship went down, there rose a terrific cry to the ear of God from off the bosom of those maddened waters. It was a kind of prayer, for all misery is a prayer in the ear of our Heavenly Father; and His mercy followed to the bottom of the sea those who sank there that wild and stormy night. Rosamond floated on the top of the dark waves, as if her white frock which was spread out on the waters held her up, I was going to say that she was thou sands of miles away from home, but alas! she had no home in all the wide world. A child, to whom no one is kind, can have no real home, though she may live in ever so grand a house, and have plenty of brothers and sisters. But there she was on the cruel sea, thousands of miles from any land, her frock making a white speck on the water, and the savage wind roaring fearfully all round her, as if it had room and time to get up its strength, when it had thou sands of miles of sea to flow over without being interrupted by any mountains or trees.

Most little girls in England were safe in their quiet beds that night sleeping sweet sleep, or dreaming heavenly dreams; and smiles and kisses, and endless dear little jo} r's, will meet them when they wake. How little they thought of that white speck on the stormy ocean. Those whom she had left in the boarding school, how little they thought of it! Even in their dreams, they dreamed of nothing half so strange as Rosamond on the bosom of the deep. But in reality all children, to whom nobody is kind, are quite as desolate as she was, even in the middle of London, with miles of houses all round them, and streams of carriages and floods of men. It is worse than death to have no one to be kind to us; and we ourselves are never so unlike God, as when we are unkind. that all children had the grace never to be unkind to other children, especially to orphans!

Some children are exceedingly quick at under standing things. They can take hints even more speedily than grown-up persons. They seem to understand by their feelings, rather than by their heads. These sensitive clever children may do great things for God when they grow up. But they run a great risk of not being good. They are very likely to be unhappy children, and to grow up with their tempers soured, and their hearts gloomy. It is a very dangerous thing to be sensitive. It is not a fault, because God makes some persons more sensitive than others. Sensitive people are also capable of greater graces than others. The saints were for the most part exceedingly sensitive. But nevertheless it is dangerous, because it is so easy for sensitive persons to go wrong when they are children, and to go wrong in a way which will affect their whole future life.

Kow I will tell you how it was that Rosamond began to go wrong. I think you will learn a great deal from it. I will tell it you as her good Angel saw it, and understood it.

Before her relations sent her so unkindly to school, when she was far too young to have gone, she had often felt that their house was not exactly a home. She had got an idea, from hearing story-books read, of what a mother was like, and longed to have one. She made pictures in her mind of her own mother, whom she could not remember: and then she fell in love with her own pictures; and when she was by herself of a night, she used to cry over these pictures, and wish she had a mother. In her thoughts she painted her mother as a very powerful, beautiful, and most kind fairy, far sweeter than any fairy that ever danced by moonlight on the grass. Do you think she made the picture too bright? Oh no! you know well enough that a real mother is far, far better than any fairy, even if there were any fairies, and if they were all that in our fancy we could imagine them.

When children begin to make pictures in their minds, they soon take to dreaming their time away. Then they get idle and negligent, and after that disobedient, and then ill-tempered. Oh that dreaming! what an evil it is! It looks such a little fault, and is the mother of such great ones. So quick to grow, so artful to hide itself, so slow in being cured! Dreaming leads a child all wrong, and much further wrong than we should have thought possible. So it was with poor Rosamond. She felt also most keenly and acutely the unkindness of her relations. Little looks, and words, and gestures, and tones of voice, and unkind smiles, went to her heart like the stabbings of a penknife. But she was too proud to cry, at least in their presence. Nay, she often imagined neglects and unkindnesses when none were intended.

She knew that all this was exceedingly wrong; and when they at last spoke of sending her to school, she made a good resolution that she would be quite different there. Indeed, the night before she went, she knelt down by her bedside in the dark, and promised God that she would be quite changed at school. Poor little Rosamond! I fear she trusted too much to her own strength, and that in her prayer she was not quite so humble with God as she ought to have been. However she made this resolution, and determined to keep it.

"When she arrived at school with her eldest cousin, who was quite an old lady, she found another little girl with her mother in the parlour. From her cap the mother seemed to be a w r idow, and her face was very pale, although it w r as also very beautiful, and she w r as evidently in great grief. When her cousin rose to go away, poor Rosamond felt a kind of love for her rise in her heart, and she ran to her, and threw her little arms round her, and looked up into her face as if she wanted to be kissed. Her cousin stooped coldly down, and kissed her with the slightest possible kiss on the forehead, and managed so that Rosamond's lips should not touch her face and kiss her.

There now, ray child, be good, said the old lady, and give your mistress less trouble than you have given me, and then perhaps I shall have you home at the holidays.

These unkind words she said in the presence of the widow lady and her little girl. The little girl seemed alarmed and astonished, and looked at Rosamond as if she was a kind of wild animal.

As the mistress was not in the room, Rosamond remained sitting there. I believe if she had burst out crying, she would have gained the love and pity of the, widow lady and her little girl. But Rosamond had got the habit of not crying before others.

Soon afterwards the widow lady rose to go away, and rang for the mistress. The parting between the mother and the little girl was most affecting. Rosamond had never seen anything like it, even in the pictures she had imagined in her own mind. It seemed as if both the hearts of mother and child would be broken. They bade good bye twenty times over. Their kisses were the longest kisses Rosamond had ever seen. They called each other by all manner of sweet names. Rosamond wondered that the mother did not tell her child to be good. But what she wondered at most of all, was that they did not seem to care about crying before the mistress. Poor Rosamond! her heart inside her burned painfully, like a red hot coal.

The mistress then took both the children into an orchard, where the rest of the girls were playing, and after she had introduced them to their new companions, she left them. The little girl who had just parted with her mother, began to cry again. Whereupon all the girls got round her, and petted her. One kissed the tears away out of her eyes. Another smoothed her hair. An other patted her cheek. Then one of the big girls sat down on a garden chair, and took the little child on her knee, and gave her kandkerchief to one of the others, who ran and dipped it in the cold water of the fountain, and came and bathed her hot face with it. After that, thev i/ tried to coax her to play, and pelted her with rose-leaves, and as soon as they had made her smile, they set up a loud shout of joy, and ran and kissed her, so that vou would have almost tf thought she would have been kissed away.

Meanwhile Rosamond was standing apart under a quince tree, and had hardly been noticed. But a bright happy-faced girl, whose eyes were full of innocent mischief and fun, ran up to her and said, Why you have not been crying. I declare you have parted with your dear mother without a tear you cold little creature! And, as she said this, she threw a handful of rose-leaves into her face.

Now it so happened that Eosamond was intensely wretched at that moment, far more wretched than any tears could have told. The little girl, who w r as crying, was as happy as an Angel in heaven compared with Rosamond. Rosamond was env}dng those very tears. She was dreaming over again that scene with the widow-mother in the parlour. She was almost rebelling against God, because she had no mother herself. So she lost her temper, and pushed the little girl who had thrown the rose-leaves at her. She pushed her very rudely, so that the little girl, whose name was Agatha, fell over a root of the quince-tree, which stuck up through the grass, and hurt her forehead upon it, and made it bleed. Agatha immediately began to cry; and as she was an immense favourite with the other girls, they all got round her in a moment, soothing and consoling her in every way, and looking very angrily at Rosamond.

Now Rosamond was nearly heart-broken at what she had done; and after a few moments struggle with her pride, went up to Agatha to beg her pardon, and to ask her to kiss her. But just as she was going to speak, one of the other girls pushed her away, and said, No! you naughty thing, you shall not hurt our darling Agatha any more.

So Rosamond turned away and went to another part of the orchard.

Then the little child, who had just parted with her mother, told the girls in a whisper the dreadful words that Rosamond's cousin said to her when she went away. Now they all supposed this cousin to be Rosamond's mother. So they took a great dislike to her, and kept away from her; and though they did not do anything positively wrong to her, they made her very miser able by not loving her; and she had no means of keeping the good resolution she had made. Thus things got worse and worse, until the mistress wrote to the poor child's cousin, and said that she could not keep such a sulky, gloomy girl any longer. It was soon afterwards that they sent her to Australia.

I could say a great deal to you about all this. You see how Rosamond wished to be good, and made a trial to be good, and yet did not succeed.

You also see how it was her own fault. When she made her resolution to God, she did not ask Him to give her grace to keep it: when Agatha threw the rose-leaves at her, she should not have lost her temper; when the girl told her not to go near Agatha, though in reality she was going to beg her pardon, she should have carried her humility a little further, and said that she was only going to beg Agatha's pardon.

You see also how the other girls were in the wrong. They should not have judged Rosamond for not crying when her cousin left her. They judged her on a mistake; for they fancied her cousin was her mother, and you know they were quite wrong. They were in fault also for not giving her another trial. It would go very hard with them, if God only gave them a single trial. Alas! our dear heavenly Father gives us twenty trials in a day; and the more trials we are patient and kind enough to give other people, the more trials He will mercifully give to us.

You see also of what great importance little things often are, even when we are children, and how much power, both for good and evil, we have over each other's souls. It is rather frightening to think of this. But there is one grand rule, which will keep us safely wherever we go and whatever we do and that is always to be kind to everybody. And why should we ever be unkind, when we remember how delightful it is to be kind, more delightful even than a mothers kiss, which, after many, many orphan years, I remember still.

But we must really return to our story, for sve left poor Rosamond floating like a white speck on the black and stormy sea. The huge waves rose far above her head, and curled over, and seemed every moment as if they would fall upon her, and sink her to the bottom. The wind and the thunder roared against each other. The waves clashed angrily with a hissing watery sound. The lightnings, red and blue, split the dark clouds, and almost blinded her. And she fancied she saw sea monsters in the water round her, with their backs glistening for the moment when the lightning blazed.

Rosamond was afraid. You will not wonder at that. The wonderful thing in reality was, that this was the first time in her life that she ever had been afraid. Probably we were afraid for the first time, when we were so young, that we cannot remember now what it felt like. But if we could have seen the inside of our souls just then, we should have seen that nothing that can ever happen to us in after-life, will change us so much as our first fear. It changed Rosamond. She had often said her prayers before, and she made a very short prayer now. But there was something in it, and she felt there was, quite different from any other prayer which she had ever made before. She had no sooner made it, than her fear passed away, and she was as quiet on the tossing black waters, as she had ever been on the soft sandy grass of her own sea-side common, through which the silent river found its way into the sea.

Suddenly by her side a beautiful Angel seated himself. He had in his hand a branch of a curious tree. Its leaves were very green, and the sweet smell of them almost took her breath away.

Rosamond! my sister! I am with you, said the Angel. You must come with me. And he touched her eyes, and nose, and mouth, and ears, with the sweet-smelling green leaves, and it seemed as if her breath went out of her. Then, taking hold of her hand, he drew her down with him under the w T aters. They sank very gently until they reached the bottom of the sea.

There was no storm there. But there was a quiet golden green light, which Rosamond thought must come from the Angel; but she did not know. It was a beautiful place. Tall trees grew there, and waved gracefully about in the water. Some of the trees w r ere green, some blue, some bright yellow, and some of the most delicate rose-colour. But the greatest number were of different shades of very glossy brown. Some of the trees had no leaves, but only twigs, like the trees on land in winter, while others had leaves like ribbons, broad or narrow. Some of the trees were more than a mile high, and their leaves fifty yards long. Then there were rosecoloured shrubs low down, and rose-coloured grass to sit upon; and beautiful animals swam in and out among these under-water w r oods, and others rested on the branches.

They sat down on the rose-coloured grass, and the Angel took Rosamond's hand, and spoke to her.

I am your Guardian Angel, my darling little sister. God has sent me from heaven to be always by your side all through your life, and to do you all the good you will let me do you.

Have you left the grand Heaven, said Rosamond, to be with such a melancholy girl as I am? Everybody dislikes me, and I am afraid that I dislike everybody now.

Saying this, Rosamond began to cry.

The Angel answered, Yes, dearest! I have left Heaven for your sake; but I am never melancholy. I cannot be melancholy, because I always see God, and the sight of God is in itself the heaven of heavens.

Do you see God in these green waters? said Rosamond, trembling.

Yes! said the Angel.

But I see nothing, replied Rosamond, except these wonderful trees, and shining fishes.

how beautiful they are!

Yes! Rosamond, said the Angel; but God does not think them so beautiful as your soul.

! God cannot think my soul beautiful, it is so naughty and sulky. The servant at school used to say that she was sure my soul was as black as a coal.

Ah! Rosamond! but God thinks it very beautiful, although it is naughty. He loves you so tenderly, that we Angels, if we did not understand God better, might think He did not know all about you, He seems to love you so much better than you deserve.

Angel! do you love- me?

Yes! Rosamond! I love you most tenderly, and I always love you, and it fills me full of joy to be near you.

To be near me! said Rosamond in amazement: why, the girls at school used to say they should love me best when I was a hundred miles off.

Then Rosamond began to cry; and while her tears were very bitter, they were also very sweet. She hardly knew why she wept; but, as she wept, she seemed to be weeping her old heart out of her; and it seemed as if the golden light of the Angel went into her, and began turning itself into a new heart for her. I think it was being spoken kindly to which made her cry, because she had never been used to it. By the time she had done weeping, all her old heart was gone, and all her new heart was come: and the deep green sea, as it swung to and fro, seemed to wipe her eyes for her, as gently as if it was a mother.

When she had done w r eeping, she said, dear Angel! I have got a new heart.

And the Angel laughed, and his laugh sounded like hundreds of little silver bells, and it made her more merry and gay than she had ever been before in her life, and at the same time so gentle and soft, that it seemed to her as if she could both, laugh and cry at the same time, and not know which of the two was the happiest.

Rosamond! said the Angel, it is true you have got a new heart; but I think you have got new eyes as well.

And Rosamond looked about her, and behold! all things were changed! Everything seemed full of love and happiness, and in some strange way she saw that all the love and happiness came from God. There was a happy look of love in the fishes eyes, which she had not perceived before. When they waved their tails about, she saw, as plainly as if their tails spoke, that it was all quiet happiness.

She saw that the old sea swung to and fro, as if it could not keep itself still, because it was so full of joy. The dumb, wet, silvery life of the fishes seemed very strange to her, and she saw how silent people could be full of happiness, whereas hitherto, w T hen she had been silent, she had always been sulky. The very light out of the Angel was happiness, and joy, and God's presence.

This was Rosamond's first lesson. It was a grand school, though rather a funny one, that curious bottom of the huge sea. I think on the whole, that what astonished her most was, that creatures should be so happy, when they could not make a noise. To be sure, the fishes made a sort of chuck when they took in a mouthful of water, and the oysters every now and then clapped their shells, as if they had some sweet thought all on a sudden. I do not wonder this astonished her; for I have never yet been able to make out myself, whether a noisy child or a silent child is the happiest.

Morning was rising over the great woods. Rosamond and her Angel were living in the air. They had risen up out of the sea. When she was tired, she could sit down on the air, and rest, as if it was a good stout cushion. It would almost have made you wild with joy, if you could have heard how the wood rang with the songs of the birds, as the sun rose that morning. She saw that birds were among the animals, what Angels are among spirits, bright, hot, joyous things. She saw how wonderfully quick their hearts beat, and how hot their blood is, and that the hotter then-hearts are, the softer are their feathers. Perhaps they are the most joyous of animals, because they are nearest heaven. Flying is a thing delicious in itself. Singing perhaps does not so much make them happy, as it saves their hearts from bursting because they are too full of happiness.

To say the truth, Rosamond thought the birds almost too joyous to be gentle. They were slightly boisterous. Neither did she think they were altogether so good-humoured as the fishes were. For she had observed at the bottom of the sea that even when the fishes ate each other up, they did it in a kindly, good-tempered sort of way. But what struck her most among the birds w r as, that she w r atched them as they flew, and she saw a silver hand round each of them, the fingers closing round their velvety feathers, but not quite touching, only ready to rest them when they were tired; and when they crossed the sea, she saw Angels holding up the tips of their Avings, lest they should fall. And she understood that the hand was the Hand of their Heavenly Father, and then she did again, what she had learned to do at the bottom of the sea, laughed and cried at the same time.

-i.

One night at the end of her bird-life, the Angel took her, as he often did, to sleep in a grand orange-coloured cloud in the midst of the sunset. But this night she could not sleep, she wanted to ask questions.

My dear Angel, she said, I am astonished at the immense quantity of joyousness among the birds. Why does God fill the world with so much happiness?

God Himself, said the Angel, blessed be His Holy Name! is uncreated, unbeginning happiness. He created the world to fill it with His own happiness; and He meant those creatures to glorify Him most, who should be the happiest. He had nothing to gain by creating the world. It was His excessive goodness which made Him do it. There is only one thing in the world, which God never intended, and that is naughtiness; and where there is naughtiness, there is no happiness.

But how, said Rosamond, could anything get into the world, if God did not intend it; and if God did not intend naughtiness, how can there be any naughtiness in the world?

Because, replied the Angel, God saw that in order to be happy we must be free.

This answer made Rosamond think; it was somewhat hard to understand, but it contented her.

After a while she said, God seems to be very much in the world of birds. Perhaps this is the reason why the birds are a people who appear to be so much given to prayer.

Yes! said the Angel, the very chirping of the little ones in their nests is a sort of happy, humble, confidential intercourse with God.

! cried Rosamond, how dear is God!

Times and places were changed now. Rosamond and the Angel were living among the insects. This was the most wonderful of the worlds she had seen. It was the least, and yet it was the strongest. It could destroy the world of men, if God did not interfere to keep it down. It struck Rosamond, that the insects were more social than the birds. For the most part they dwelt in nations and cities, with kings and queens, and enjoyed each other's company in the most cheerful manner, and talked endlessly, some with tongues, some by making their wings whirr and buzz, and some by tickling each other's faces with long feelers or pliant horns. they were a merry lot!

Yet somehow it was strange they should be so, because millions of them were dying every moment. Every breath of air that blew, every drop of rain that fell, every animal that passed by, killed multitudes of them. But they did not mourn. Rosamond would perhaps have loved them better, if they had mourned. As it was, they struck her as bei^g, more merry than affectionate, and clever rather than kind. But they were mightily industrious, and it was this perhaps which, made them happy. How very seldom a clever child is happy or sweet-tempered, unless he is industrious! But the love of God appeared more wonderful, and more ingenious, and more minute, among the bright insects, than among the fishes or the birds.

One day when Rosamond and the Angel had been living for some time in a wasp's nest, and she had been admiring the lovingness and unselfishness of the wasps to each other, and with what alacrity they were all trying to do each others work, and make each other comfortable without caring to be comfortable themselves, she said to the Angel, dear Angel! how full this wasp's nest is of the love and tenderness and joy of God.

Yes, replied the Angel, He is everywhere, because He is immense; but it is more wonderful to me that He should everywhere be making Himself so little, and stooping to His little crea tures, and filling all their tiny natures full to overflowing with joy out of His great Self!

Angel! Angel! cried Rosamond, and we men and women are kind to so few, and so often unkind to the few to whom we really wish to be kind!

Rosamond wept as she spoke, and then looked at the wasps, and smiled. But this time the laughing and the crying did not go together.

It was noonday on the green plains of Tartary. Rosamond and the Angel were living among the beasts. She was very much struck with the beasts. She thought they each of them had characters, which made them so much more like men, than either the fishes, or the birds, or the insects were. What affected her most was the love the mothers had for their young.

She found no unhappiness among the beasts, but there was a great deal of gentleness, which almost amounted to sadness. It was expressed in their deep voices. But, above all, she read it in their eyes. To be sure, it was not quite so with all of them. Some had a foolish look. The camel had an expression in its eye, which made her laugh, because it looked as if the beast was going to make a joke, but w r as puzzled how to do it neatly. Also in some eyes there was a laughter-loving look of mischief: and some looked sly.

O i/

But the eyes of the horses were full of character, quite as much so as men's faces; and the eyes of the oxen were the most beautiful things she had seen in nature, so full were they of love, of quietness, and of contentment.

Still there was a sweet and softened gentleness in them all, as if they had had a human experience of life, and so left off frisking about the green plains. She thought their happiness a quiet happiness, like the happiness of a man, who, while he is happy in himself, is sorrowing for others; and she thought that perhaps, as the beasts come next to man, they have a sort of sympathy with him, as well as obedience to him. On the whole she considered that in this w r oiid of beasts there was great happiness, but more kindness than happiness. They were affectionate rather than joyous. And she liked them better for it. Those eyes of the oxen helped on the change in her very much.

She and the Angel sate in the dewy starlight in the midst of a herd of very small antelopes. The Angel said to her, My little sister, you have been growing very pensive, since you came to live among the beasts!

She said, But my dear Angel! I am not less happy. I am more happy, more silently happy, more deeply happy. All is love and all is joy; but there are so many kinds of love, so many kinds of joy, I am bewildered. One thing only do I see, that on all God's earth there is nothing melancholy.

Then the Angel said, Rosamond! we have done with earth. And he took her by the hand, and - they rose up through the dewy starlight, and they passed on to the distant stars, and left them behind, till the great round orbs, which had grown larger and larger as they approached them, now grew smaller and smaller as they left them, and then \vent out of sight altogether.

At last they came to an immense purple cloud, and in one place there w r as a faint cloudy light, such as the moon makes in a mist, and the Angel took her there and told her to look through. And she saw the world of Angels, a vast golden Avorld of light and song, but made softer and fainter to her through the thick mist. She saw that no one in all that world had ever known what sadness was. Wise as they were, they could.not even tell what sadness was like. They were so happy, that they would have been too happy to love any one or to be kind, if their happiness had not come from God, and therefore was love as w r ell as happiness.

She saw into the inside of one Angel's spirit, but it was at a great distance, and she did not see very clearly. But it seemed to her that there was in that one spirit such oceans of happiness, as would have drowned a thousand w r orlds, if it could have been poured out over them. When she had looked for a long while, she turned away, weeping and not smiling, and said, It is too bright. I feel all black myself

& while I look at it.

Then the Angel slip wed her a golden seat, between two glorious Angels, and he blew gently on the mist, and she saw plain, and her name was written on the chair, and she saw that, if she persevered in loving God, that was to be her eternal home, and actually the dear Angels were rehearsing the songs they intended to sing, to welcome her when her hour should come. And she fell back, saying, It is too much love: it is too much happiness!

The quietness of midnight was on Jerusalem. Above the moonlit city was one cloud, which stood quite still, and cast a single spot of black shadow on the white buildings. Sad music played high up in the air, and when it ended there was a strange silence, a silence which might be felt and touched; at least it seemed so. Then the Angel fell upon his face on the cloud, and told her to do the same. She did so, and down below, on the Mount of Olives and in Jerusalem, she saw beautiful human-looking Angels acting the Passion of our dearest Lord. What was most wonderful was, that the Angels managed in each mystery to sho\v the inside of our Lord's Heart, as well as what He "said,- and^ did, and suffered, outwardly.

But in all the.mysteries Rosamond saw herself

~* t *- always lying right in the middle of the Heart of

Jesus, as if all He suffered was only for her.

And she hid her face under the Angel's whig, and said, it is too much kindness! < My heart will break.

And the Angel kissed her, and said. Kindness

O +~ \ 7-^ has more heart in it than happiness. "

Then Rosamond said, dear Angel! take me back to life; for I see that kindness is God's shadow, great and broad, falling softly and sweetly over the whole world. And now that I have seen that kindness of Jesus, I am dying to be kind to some one. I do not care any longer for people being kind to me: I only want to be kind to them, to be kind always, and to be kind tq everybody. I can only be happy now by being kind.,

Years passed away. One autumnal evening the sun shone out goldenly and free over a green hill-side in Austraiia. It was dotted with the strange stiff-leaved trees of that land, and sheep

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with snowy fleeces were scattered over the slope.

A funeral procession was winding along a road which led to a little cemetery, in the centre of which stood a Crucifix, and along the walls of which we re painted at intervals the Stations of our Lord's. Passion. The procession moved on somewhat irregularly; for it was encumbered with a crowd, w T hicli seemed to form almost the whole population of the little town which lay just below. The poor were all there. Old men on sticks, who could hardly keep up with the procession, slow as it was, and women, children, rough grown-up shepherd lads, and stout labour ing men, all were there, most of them in tears, and all of them with the expression of deep sorrow on then- faces. The priest himself was Aveeping.

It was Rosamond's funeral. She had grown up in Australia. She had soothed the declining years of her aunt, and had inherited her fortune. She had remained unmarried, that she might the better devote her life to acts of kindness. The more ungrateful any one w r as to her, the more kind she was to him. She had died now, close upon a hundred years old, beloved, almost worshipped, by all in the little town. Large as her alms were, it was her kindness more than her alms that they thought of. The poor have delicate hearts, and none thirst for love so much as they. They were now carrying to her grave her whom they had affectionately named The Kind Lady," the poor Rosamond, the disagree able child, to whom no one but her Angel had been kind!