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He had many times marked unmoved the same sign; but to-day he had whispered to his heart a prayer for help, where he had never before sought it.

His New Year's calls were not yet over. He was still at dinner, when a tiny scented note was handed to him.

"Will Dr. Huber call upon Miss Reynolds at his earliest convenience?"

The doctor pushed his plate away, and started to his feet. Kate Reynolds! Even now the name, seen for the first time in years, sent a strange thrill of pain through his heart.

The rain still fell heavily, but he found the stately home of the heiress filled with a gay throng of visitors. Mrs. Reynolds, in full dress, came into the hall to meet him.

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I can't think what possesses Kate, doctor. She will not admit that she is sick, but has refused to see any callers to-day, and about an hour ago insisted upon sending for you. She wishes to see you alone!"

One hour later the doctor left the house. With bowed head and pallid face he walked home, wrote and despatched a note, and then locked the door of his study.

Have you ever seen an iron nature convulsed by the extreme of mental agony; a stern, hard heart turned from unbelief by one crushing blow; a lifetime of cynical hardness uprooted and thrown out by one whirlwind of passionate pain? If not, you cannot read the agony of the next hour.

White as death, with heavily-drawn breath, quivering limbs, and clasped hands, the doctor lay on the floor fighting the fiercest of all his life's struggles. At last the form was still; the peaceful light of long, long years ago came to the bent face, and, kneeling like a child at his mother's knee, the doctor prayed, "Lord, I believe ! Help thou my unbelief! Oh, in the coming hour of trial, God help me! God help me!" The passionate cry grew quiet, and at last the prayer came in whispered words, not the agony of the heart cry.

When Dr. Smith tapped at the door, there was no trace in the calm face of Dr. Huber of the past hour's struggle. Very grave, almost sad, the black eyes were now, but the note which had summoned the consulting physician had prepared him for that.

"I was sent for this morning by Miss Rey-, nolds, in street," said Dr. Huber, quietly, as he placed a chair for his friend," and have sent for you to go there with me immediately, to perform an operation."

"An operation! Kate Reynolds! This is very sudden. An accident?"

"Cancer!"

Not a quiver of the white lips told how the word stopped the throbbing of the doctor's heart.

"Cancer! I never suspected it."

"She has kept it from her own mother, but to-day the agony became unendurable. She knew the danger, and sent for me. I have a elaim of old friendship."

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Yes, alone. Dr. Smith will call with me to-morrow morning, at nine o'clock. I came to prepare you for our visit."

"Thank you! I knew you would be kind to me, when I sent for you. See how I trusted the love I once slighted, Albert "-and the once haughty face was bowed. "Is there danger ?"

"I will not deceive you," he said, gravely; "there is great danger."

"Then," and she reached out her hand to him," say you forgive me."

"I forgive you," he said, softly, taking the little hand in his own.

"Let me tell you now," she said humbly, "that I have long bitterly repented the past. I was cold and cruel, worshipping wealth and position. In the long hours of pain this"-and she touched her bosom--" has caused, I have found a new heart, a new trust. I felt there was danger, and I prayed to be fit to die. Many sins were mine to repent, but none cried louder in my heart than my broken faith to you, 0, Albert! you can never know what it cost me to think of you wrecked, as you threatened to be, for two weary years. Thank God! your own noble nature saved you. I may die to-morrow, I know; and as a dying woman, Albert, hear e-I love you! have always loved you!" "You may yet live," he whispered; "if

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Still," she answered, "I love you!" Long after midnight the doctor said to himself, as he sat alone by his study fire, "New Year's Day! With God's blessing, I will live new life from this day." It was

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a terrible morning that followed. None but himself knew what the operation cost him; but the hand that guided the knife was firm, the nerve steady, the eye true; and if the heart bled, none saw the wound.

Day after day saw the patient slowly gaining strength, and before another New Year dawned the doctor had taken his old love into his new life.

With a tender memory of each call on the New Year's Day of our story, he cared for every patient; and when, years later, a new star broke forth upon the musical world, Guilia Cellini owed a deep debt of gratitude to the doctor who

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See those snow-flakes how they flutter-
Flutter through the quiet air,
Floating hither, floating thither,
Slowly sailing everywhere.

Dark the cloud from which they quiver,
Drear each spot on which they fall,
City, forest, frozen river,

Whiten 'neath their spotless pall.
No deep wind the stillness rendeth,
Moaning 'mid the branches bare;
Twig and treetop slowly bendeth
'Neath the suow-flakes falling there,
As they shiver, as they quiver
Through the cold and quiet air.

Thus is life's each moment measured
By some blessing from above,
And with each descends its treasured
Tokens of our father's love.
Though its skies be dark and dreary,

Rough the paths our feet must tread,
And life's work be hard and weary,
Lightly be its labours sped.
Clouds of sorrow, o'er us bending,
Darkling shades around may spread;
Hopes, with silent flight descending,
Rest on every toil-bent head;
Blessings whiten, blessings brighten
Every path our feet must tread.

LEARN THE SANCTITY OF DUTY.-It is to be feared that thousands, even of intelligent persons, and persons who are supposed to be religious beings, have no conception of the greatness of the idea of duty, of moral accountableness, of the meaning of the word "ought." But it is certain that nothing is done well until it is done from the sense of a controlling principle of inherent and essential rightness. Duty is the child of Love, and therefore there is power in all its teachings and commands.

RAMBLES AND REVIEWS OF A MODERN MORALIST.

No. I.-VANISHED THINGS.

"The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And like this unsubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind."

The Tempest,

Few people can look back into the past without a sigh. Even the most fortunate among us, for whom the bitter cup has seldom been mixed, treasure up recollections of lost friends and sad partings from pleasant places, of things which were, but never can be again, which have merged into the vanished things of earth. If we reflect a moment, we shall find that very few pleasures which we have enjoyed have equalled the delight of anticipation, or the sad chaste joy of retrospection. How bright were the pictures of anticipated pleasure which imagination drew in those rosy tints which only imagination can produce! how rich was the enjoyment of living from day to day, not in that "hope deferred, which maketh the heart sick," but in eager expectation, feeling that every hour brought us nearer the wished-for object! In such cases as this there can be no doubt that "distance lends enchantment to the view;" for when the real enjoyment came at last, though possibly very delightful, yet how far inferior was it to the anticipated joys and bright visions of our expectant fancy! And then, when the wished-for pleasure has passed away into the place of vanished things, is there not real comfort in looking back upon it, though we may do so through a mist of tears?

All my readers must know this feeling well; they must know the void which is left between them and the past, even if that past be but of yesterday. Who has not experienced this feeling of isolation and loss when they have parted with some dear one, perhaps only for a short time? When the last words are spoken, and the train glides swiftly out of the station, how mournful is the look of that last carriage as it vanishes round a curve in the line! The rest of the train passes away with little notice, but the back of that last carriage seems sternly mocking our impotence to stay the course of the tyrant which is bearing off the loved ones from our eyes. This may be thought fanciful, but I am writing what I have felt many times. It is the same when the steam-boat has left the pier: the trough in the eddying waters, which the keel has ploughed for a moment in its course, seems to swallow up the hope of meet

ing once again; it tells us that the last moment is past and gone-that we are alone! We may meet those friends again on earth in a few months or years, but we may have to wait till both have reached the echoless shore, where the winds sleep, and whence "no traveller returns," and the uncertainty is overwhelming.

Of a truth, there are not in our language two more difficult words to utter than these, "Farewell," and "Gone!" The one is the sad signal of separation-the sign which tells us that the last moment has arrived and will soon be past; we would lengthen it out as long as possible, we would gladly dwell on its syllables; but in vain; the fatal word is said, and we have to realize the second hard reality-"Gone!" Yes, the ties are broken; the silver cord of companionship is loosened; there is a void, a blank; the loved ones, "the old familiar faces," the long-seen spots, are gone.

Let it not be supposed that I write this in a spirit of morbid discontent; on the contrary, I find pleasure in living in the past and the future, as well as in working in the present; I do not agree, therefore, with Longfellow's words

"Let the dead Past bury its dead!"

We may look back along the course we have travelled, and learn from it some lesson to guide us on our farther way. Let me ask you, then, my reader, to ramble with me for awhile, not forward, among the scenes and sounds which are, but back to the phantoms of past people and places and thoughts, over which the curtain of oblivion has not yet descended. There are not many among us, I fancy, who have not a secret storehouse of vanished things, laid up somewhere or other in their memory. Even the hard, unsentimental man of business, who pretends to think everything romance and nonsense which does not in some way tend to the production of money, even he has some green oasis in his barren desert of dry bones, and recollects some vanished things over which he can afford to sigh when he can find time to think. There is that spot somewhere away in the country, where he played and worked and

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you that that man who looks so hard and close and worldly, never goes back along the pleasant paths of memory to that old school-house,

That at her flowery work doth sing,
And the waters murmuring,
With such a concert as they keep
Entice the dewy feathered sleep."

"Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,

where the white-haired master bore his pupils' To the true lovers of nature, even if
stupidity with such gentle resignation, and
sighed over the beautiful thoughts of those of
old time which they could not discover? Think
you that many a busy worldling who now pre-
tends to laugh at anything except "business"
and "getting on in life" does not occasionally
open the penetralia of his heart, and look into
the past with sad or cheerful eyes, according as
he has used the days that are gone? I believe
fully that there is more sentiment in this world
than most people imagine; the fault is, that
men now-a-days are ashamed of their senti-
ments, and are afraid of being thought to have
hearts that beat for anything beyond the gifts
of great King Mammon.

But let me pass on to some of my own vanished things. I am far from country scenes and sounds now; the noisy road, the smoky atmosphere, the November fog are my companions; yet I can live back into the summer weather, I can hear the skylark instead of the carriages; and November's muddy streets are blooming forth into golden corn-fields and waving flowers. I am away among the sweetsmelling hop-gardens of pleasant Kent, where the wandering Arab tribes have found a brief abiding-place among the green clusters of the hops. These hop-pickers have come from afar, in every direction, from the wretched purlieus of eastern London, from the Irish haunts of evil St. Giles's, and once courtly Kensington, from the wretched hives of crime and misery which fringe the mud of unlovely Thames; and from many a place besides, these wandering families have met together among the sweet, breezy hop-gardens.

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Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unfold," the banks of a stream must ever be a welcome spot to wander in. To the moralist too, and one who often prefers "to be alone, rather than in bad company," or even any company at all, the river's side is a fit place to indulge in quiet thoughts and pleasant day-dreams. Many are the pleasant visions of river-side wanderings which come back to me now-visions of drowsy summer days, when the glint of the sunlight fell on the stream through a canopy of overhanging trees; when the waters lay unruffled by a passing breath of air, and the droning buzz of the restless insects and the occasional splash of some awakening fish were the only sounds around me. Those were times when I pursued "contemplative man's recreation," after the model given in the delightful pages of quaint old Izaak Walton. In the dreamy hot noontide the fish slept, doubtless, as all nature seemed to do, and during those hours I would lie under the shadow of the willows, and watch the river gliding along so silently and rapidly, with its bright waters gay with the purple flowers of the water-violet, and with the white and yellow lilies sleeping calmly on its surface; the green milfoil grew below in the bright depths, and made the river-bed a blooming garden where the roach sported among the green feathery branches. As the evening comes on, when the white moth is abroad on the waters, let me cast my line in yon pool, where the chub is watching for his prey. See! he has leapt at my too seductive bait, and I hold him fast, whilst his splashing sends whole shoals of his brethren flying like lightning down the stream. Higher up, where the murmur of the waters tells of some tiny cascade, I may chance upon a trout, whose capture, should he prove of weight, will send me home rejoicing to mine inn.

Again, the green meadows are all around me, I am rambling among the wild flowers in the hedges and sunny banks beloved of brightwinged insects. The delicate white blossoms of the wild convolvulus are climbing luxuriantly over every hedge, and the lilac-flowered scabious is blooming on yonder sloping bank where the sunlight sleeps so dreamily. A bright Yet, again I am in the meadows, and am and pleasant flower is that wild scabious-very watching the rooks retiring toward their lofty different to her mournful sister, that sombre homes for the night, mindful of the golden sunflower which St. Pierre tells us of in the sad and set in the west. What a thoroughly country beautiful story of "Paul and Virginia." On sound, so unlike anything we have amongst the the uplands yonder the ruddy corn is waving, haunts of men, is that cawing of rooks! Surely its golden billows diversified by the gaudy crim- all that noise must mean something; indeed we son poppies (fit emblem of Vanity), and by know that the rooks hold parliaments in which many another gay flower. The reapers have there is much cawing, and where we will hope already begun their work, and the golden corn- that something is sometimes done, in which fields will soon be, in fact are now, whilst I write case the rooks' senate will be very unlike certain these lines, bare stubble-deserts where the par- similar bodies among the superior race of anitridge hides, and the field-mouse has her sub-mals known as men. But there is "no house toterranean abode. But anon I am away by a lone stream's side, and may say with Milton

"There, in close covert by some brook Where no profaner eyes may look, Hide me from day's garish eye,

Whilst the bee, with honeyed thigh,

night" among the elm trees; the last caws have sunk in silence; the bat is abroad, and

"From yon ivy-mantled tower

The moping owl doth to the moon complain ;" so I must ramble no more at present.

But see! the rain is beating on my window, the wintry fog is about me, and I can hear, O most terrible of sounds, an organ! Yet have I been abroad in the corn-fields and flowery meadows, by the river and by the hedge-row, but they are only the spectres of vanished things.

Let us look into another vista of the past. What a crowd of vanished things belonged to those days when people sang

"God save great George our King !"

What memories of powdered hair that needed the eternal supervision of the coiffeur, of kneebreeches and gold buckles, of Petersham coats and Tilbury carriages! Where is the Count d'Orsay of our time, he who set the fashion to the beau monde, which fashion they must needs follow, or perish in the attempt? Who sets the fashion now, I wonder? Is it Blondin or Lord Dundreary? Or is it "Lady Audley's Secret," or the Ghost? Those were gay times and witty times, for all the sins of wicked "old Q." and the extravagances of the "First Gentleman" and his friends. There are, perhaps, as bad men and women now, though they do not flutter their painted wings in the sun of court favour, but the bons mots and gay dresses are vanished things. Who would think now-a-days of taking perfumed baths daily, as did the handsome and witty Count d'Orsay? Who would think of fighting a duel, and, when wounded, of hurrying on one's recovery in order to kill the more fortunate adversary, as did Count Montrond? Where are the Beau Brummels of 1863, who think that "they once tasted a pea"? We have lordly victims of ennui, and fine ladies who are au desespoir at finding "nothing new under the sun." But the beaux are gone to the place where hairpowder and cocked-hats have gone before them.

And yet there are people in our days quite as indolent. as these sons of a vanished fashion, and nothing proves this better than the following fact. A gentleman was walking through the streets of Manchester, and noticed a number of porters lying under the wall of the Royal Exchange, as their custom is, waiting to be hired. They were all either asleep or in the last stage of indolent helplessness. The gentleman, amused at this scene, exclaimed, putting his hand into his pocket, "Come, here's half-acrown for the laziest fellow among you!" The effect was magical; the torpid porters sprang into life, and advanced their respective claims, except one fellow, who remained nodding against the sunny wall. Here, my man," said the patron of laziness, "you've certainly earned the money." Upon which the porter replied, in drowsy tones, "If it's a good un, you can put it in my pocket!" Not even the idlest of modern Club loungers can surpass this, I fancy.

But let us look into the past again. Where are the once gay gardens of Vauxhall and Ranelagh? Vanished things are they; vanished the cool fountains, and the green arcades, all blazing

with parti-coloured lamps; vanished the nightingales too, which haunted the cool shades of the Gardens; few indeed are the Philomels of Lambeth and Chelsea now! Pleasant places must those gardens have been, in spite of masked ladies who beset good Sir Roger de Coverley, and of ruffling gallants who were too ready with the rapier and dagger. The walks, too, of Fox Hall, or New Spring Garden, as it was then called, are rendered classic by the presence of the graceful Addison, the graphic Fielding, the gentle Goldsmith, the polished Horace Walpole, and the talented Madame d'Arblay. Here all the wits and gay pleasureseekers roamed; and here, of course, came busy Master Pepys, who never missed his diversion, come what might of his duties to the Board of Admiralty. Hear what he tells of his doings in his diary of June 20, 1665: "By water to Fox Hall, and thence walked an hour alone, observing the several humours of the citizens that were this holyday pulling off cherries, and God knows what." And again a little later he writes: "By water to Fox Hall, and there walked in Spring Garden. A great deal of company, and the weather and garden pleasant, and it is very pleasant and cheap going thither, for a man may go to spend what he will, or nothing, all as one. But to hear the nightingale and other birds, and here fiddles, and there a harp, and here a Jew's trump, and here laughing, and here fine people walking, is mighty diverting. Here fell into the company of Harry Killigrew, a rogue newly come out of France, but still in disgrace at our Court, and Newport and others, and so to supper in an arbour; but, Lord! their mad talk did make my heart ache.'

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There was queer talking, doubtless, in those Vauxhall arbours, or it would not have offended the not too scrupulous ears of Master Pepys ; but it is pleasant to think of the gay parties coming thither by water, ere yet the steamboats were thought of, and of Evelina's adventure in "the dark walks" there, when she came to hear the nightingales, as Madame d'Arblay tells us. Dean Swift, too, came to Vauxhall for the same purpose, though I should imagine their melody was but little suited to the tastes and feelings of the coarse-minded, heartless lover of Stella, to whom he writes in May, 1711: “I was this evening with Lady Kerry and Mrs. Pratt at Vauxhall, to hear the nightingales, but they are almost past singing."

Shade of Vauxhall! What remains of thee now? Where are the sylvan beauties which delighted the author of "The Citizen of the World," and called forth his praises in the mouth of his Chinese philosopher? Where is the statue of Handel which the chisel of Roubiliac shaped, or the boxes which the pencil of Hogarth adorned? I remember some time ago a dreary desert of boarding and waste land where once the nightingales sang, and even this has long since passed away.

I was rambling lately in the gardens of Chelsea Hospital, where the old pensioners sit

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