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Water that flows from a spring, does not freeze in the coldest winter. And those sentiments of true friendship which flow from the heart cannot be frozen by adversity.
[A THANKSGIVING DINNER.]
THERE are four of us young people at home: first I, who am sixteen, then there is a long gap, and next comes Katie, who is eight, and Bessie, who is six, and last of all baby Harry, who is not yet two. But we were all a year younger when what I mean to tell you of happened, for that was a year ago.
I spoke of Katie and Bessie and Harry and myself as the young people, because I think I am rather too old to be called a child, and I didn’t know how else to put it, but I don’t at all mean to call father and mother old. It is true father has a great many gray streaks in his hair, but I think that is more from care than from age.
It makes me sad, however, very sad, to see father’s hair changing color; but when I speak of it, he only laughs and says: “The whites are gaining the ascendency, and the aborigines becoming extinct.”
Father and mother have not looked like themselves since the summer mother was so ill. That was the most dreadful period of my life, I am sure. For a long time we thought she couldn’t recover. She was ill, of course, to begin with, and then the expense of having a doctor and nurse preyed on her mind and made against her. I really believe mother minded that more than the pain she suffered! At one time she got so nervous with thinking of it, that she said Dr. May’s visits did her more harm than good, and declared she wouldn’t see him again; but Dr. Armstrong, our minister, happened to come in just then, and he soon reasoned her out of all that and made her see things differently.
There couldn’t possibly be a nicer minister than Dr. Armstrong,—I can’t begin to say how much I love him; better, indeed, than anybody in the world, outside of home, except a dear friend, Miss Judith Hepburn. Miss Judith lives next door to us; she is old and very poor; she has, in fact, nothing in the world but the house she lives in, and so she occupies only one of the rooms on the first floor, and lives on the rent from the others. But Miss Judith is as happy as if she possessed all this world has to offer, and happier, too, for that matter, and this is because she is such a true Christian. “Whatever befalls us is good,” she says, “whether it comes in the shape of prosperity or of adversity, because everything is bestowed by a loving Hand.”