Cora, meantime, had been listening in silence, gazing with thoughtful, far-away eyes at the picture. At last she spoke:
"Tom, what did you think of when you stood looking up at the wonderful foamy water coming down from so high a place?"
Tom's face flushed a little.
"People think different things," he said, laughing. "As I stood there looking at it, I said, 'What a grand place that would be for a shower bath. I'd just like to go and stand under it, and take a good one.' There was a little chap stood by me, a pale-faced fellow with blue eyes, who had taken off his cap and stared up without speaking, for ten minutes. Just then he turned to me and said:"
"'I've been thinking how easy it must be for God to make wonderful things! Here he has made all this white water and tumbled it down from away up in heaven—that is the way it looks—just for the sake of giving these old still rocks something bright to play with.'"
"Wasn't that a poetical thought? Sounds like you, Cora. It made me think of you at the time."
[A BIT OF LOGIC.]
RUFUS lay at full length on the sofa, and puffed a cigar, back parlor though it was; when Mr. Parker reminded him of it, he said there were no ladies present, and puffed away. Between the puffs he talked:
"There is one argument against foreign mission work which is unanswerable; the country cannot afford it. Two millions and a half of money taken out this year, and sent to the cannibals, or somewhere else. No country can stand such a drain as that upon it, with everything else it has to do. Foreign missions are ruinously expensive."
The two young sisters of Rufus, Kate and Nannie, stood on the piazza and laughed.