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Show . MY LETTER; ' Vt r e't? ' i react' ii, my ienerr .icuer, aS'C'HVvcti.i) The waves at ray feet were crooning, tbe wind blew soft : Si:, from the west; -s was blazing fiercely The sunshine on the tangle-bedrt-- y ..' ; ,.: And as they watered to and down,' ... :. .. ' fro, they glowed to golden - brown, heard the cry of the curlews blend with the breaker's ; roar, I took from my breast my letter, and read it" yet once more. - - read it, my letter, my letter, as I loitered by the sea, And, as I read, my fancy was flying fast and free, Away from the sunny seaboard,' away from the purple . . down; I saw the smoky, sullen streets, I saw the busy town,. I saw the desk with its dusty load, I saw the dreary room, And I saw the dark-blu- e eyes I knew, ' outshining in the ' gloom, I " ' ; read it, my letter, my letter, and I saw illumine it, The graceful phrasethe graphic touch, the flash of ready I ; . wit; . . The tender lingering o'er the words, that even as he " wrote, Seemed as though love hovered over them, their truth and " "depth to note; The sweet old words whose iterance, to those that yearn to v hear, But deepens ever down and down, and deepening grows more dear. . . I read it, my letter, my letter; then softly in fragments " -small 0 I tore the precious pages, and stooped to kiss them all; They were, safe and sure, the golden words, rewritten in - It were surely best, in a world of change, with their Earthly shrines to part; So l tore it, my letter, my letter; with a Smile and with a ' ' sigh, And tossed them to the sunny sea, beneath the s unny sky. A To what I have loved so long and well, the flashing, !" . dancing wave, ;" the To mighty arms of the great North Sea, the thing I prized I gave; It should die, my letter, my letter, no common mortal rr :.' "w&aA&Mme''--death, It should be rocked upon the ocean's breast, lalledby the ocean's breath. Has a monarch a kinglier requiem, a chief a noblier .' , shrine, "Than that I gave my letter, front that rocky rest of mine? All the Year Round. -- ' BEREAVEMENT. "There's not a joy the world can give, like that it takes away. ' BYKANT. Who has not echoed these words, or the sentiment they contain, when bending over the Who has not perfectly lost beloved one? realized all they contain, the wailing of the stricken heart, the desolation of their surroundtheir future life! The ings, the dearth vacant chair that none can ever occupy the star that has gone out of their hemisphere, of-a- ll never to rise again in this, sublunary state how many that read these words will endorse them, as they strike chords responding to those in their own heart's experience. The lines I have quoted were written by one of the great-es- t poet; they were wrung out of his heart by had seen all that were a sad experience.-- He near and dear to him, with one exception, fall into the cold embrace of death, in a most singular and remarkable manner, and the one and soothed who ought to have stood the lacerated heart, was too stoical, too exalted a character to realize or appreciate a heart pierced by the arrows of the Almighty she was estranged, and left him in his sorrows, and he exclaimed, that he stood upon his hearth, with his household gods shivered around him. There are living sorrows far more poignant -- by-hi- ' - ' u'P of the soul gathered into that one grand focus, in that most mysterious intermediate moment between the mortal and clheTimmoiial; life, never, never to be forgotten in its mute language, and then succeeds a calm, a beauty beheld nowhere else, impressed . by the enfranchised spirit, like lightning upon the mortal frame it had just vacated! .... The Bible speaks of "the widows of Ashue;" may we not withtruth and. propriety speak in our scripture of he widows of Utah most bf them "widows indeed," to whom the especial favors have been, proruised.Now-man- y are made widows, and their children orphans by the cruel, the unju6t, the wicked judgments of wicked judges, casting their husbands, by unjust verdicts! into prison. jWill not the Lord require restitution at their hands? Are not His people as dear to Him as in days ff rll? Tlifa wnmon inof nomo1 Trno a nlnrol wife of the man named in the Bible, "the . might be elaborated in such aspirations as, "Father, I stand here before Thee, alone in the desert, alone, except with my young child; we are indeed in the wilderness of the world; man hath forsaken us, and cast U3 forth; we look around over the vast expanse, but all is desert; we are parched with its sand and its glaring sun; we thirst, but thftp isr no water. The pitcher is drained of its life, drop; my life is before Thee, from it3 earliest days Thou knowest I have obeyed Thy laws of marriage, and Thou hast given me this boy; he was 'beloved by his father, but another came, and he was supplanted, and because we felt the iron of oppression enter our soul, and my child in his innocence and ignorance showed out his feelings, we are cast out, but Thou seest me; pardon and forgive all that Thy pure eyes have seen amiss, and hold us thine, and let us live; Thou canst send us water even in the desert." Something like this did those few words contain, when lo! she hears a sound. She puts her ear to the ground, and distinctly hears the rushing of water. She pursues the sound, and she sees, ohjPecstasy! water gushing out of a rock that arose in the desert. She had laid her - child away that she might not see him die; she springs to him, she bathes his parched lips, his es him to drink, and face, his hands; then she drinks herself and becomes refreshed and invigorated. Was this all the answer to her prayer? Sk; behold a bright messenger from the courts of glory approaches her. -- He comes to comfort her, to teach her, and to map out her future course of life, and that of her chjjd, who was to "become the father of a great nation." What woman would not be content to pas3 through the crucible of a great living sorrow to be so honored and sustained? No doubt she had realized the full import of those thrilling: words, "There's not a joy the world can give, like that it takes away," but God is with the lowly and the forsaken, and His angels minister unto them, for "man's ex-tremity is God's opportunity." Our subject is bereavement, and we will continue it a little farther. There are few that have not lost some beloved ones, few that have not watched the soul take wing, who have not seen that thrilling look when the spirit is hovering on the confines of its eternal home,so entirely unspeakable, which no painter has ever caught, all the most intensely sacred passions she-giv- , " w than those of death, sad and desolating as "&5id this man's was a living sorrow, the all Death rest; up brings its own balm with, it; a living sorrow often has no panacea but cats as a canker into the very seat of life, causing its very fountain to send .'forth springs bitter as "the waters of Marah" arid no Moses near to throw in the sweetening corrective. Tis nature's pue to shed the tears of love and syniyathy over our beloved dead, but soon et us turn and assist in alleviating the living sorrows which we can see daily around us,: Bet us read history and biography, and we will there find that even the crowned heads and the wealthy, and such whose lot was cast in what is termed "high life," have often been martyrs, either publicly or in the private sphere of life; God is decidedly no respector of persons; if he has the least preference, it is for the poor .and the needy, the prisoner in tle Bastile, the widow and the orphan; these are assuredly His especial care. Xet us take a character from the Bible, one whose life I have so often read, and shed over it the tear of sympathy, and there is a fine moral and great consolation and instruction to be derived from how often her pathetic ejacu lation has burst from .'my own heart, and issued from my own 4Thou God seest me!'" What a beautilips ful, pathetic and confiding appeal were those words of Hagar, as she stood alone in the desert! What a volume they contain! How brier and yet how full! Her whole soul was presented to the Lord in those few words. They I of-heav- -- en k A 4niiK4il nth fkn 4nfkAM posterity should be numerous as the is tars f 11 rkrwl AT J - 1 of heaven, and the sands upon the seashore." Are notthe widow of Utah as dear to Him as thoso in days of yore? As a. widow,I confidently answer, "yes " and I know it. . He has said Ho will be the husband of the widow and the father of the orphan. Let mighty faith be cultivated by the widows and by the orphans, and if need be they, too, shall receive a mes- senger irom tne court 01 neaven to comiort, to teach, perhaps reprove the widowed daughters of God, and His rebukes shall be sweeter far than the kisses of the earthly. Why cannot the women of God have faith like the women and of old?God is the same Yesterday, y forever. His people have made holy coven ants with Him in His holy places, and have strained every nerve to keep them. He has promised those who ask shall receive; to those be opened whoS knock" the" door shall His ministering angels wait to do Eys bidding; the pure and the good are their especial care. What, then,, can hinder this people from receiving all that was bestowed upon His people of old, when His Church was first organized upon the earth? The time has come now when that Church can be no more thrown down; it may be battered and bruised, but its founda- ' tion is the rock of ages, and Christ Himself has 8aid,-."Th- e gates of hell shall not prevail against it! Heaven and earth may pass away, but my words shall not pass away." "So mote to-da- it be!" - Salt Lake City, Feb. Hannah T. King. 9th, 1886. .' NOTES AND NEWS. Norton, daughter of Prof. Chas. Eliot Norton, is one of the finest violinists of the Bostcn Orchestral Club. Miss Elizabeth Stuart Phelps has written "Burglars in Paradise," in the style ofTho Old Maid's Paradise." .Let every man take care how he speaks and writes of honest people, and not set down at a venture the first thing that comes uppermost. Inquisitive people are the funnels of conversation; they y not take in anything for their own use, but. merely to pass it to an- ' '" o t her. Miss. ... , -- Mrs. Frances Anne Kemble atiributes her attainment of her. seventy-fift- h year in: full health and vigor to her persistence in outdoor exercise, especially on horseback, in all sorts of weather. Mrs. Virginia Hanson has been nominated as State Librarian of Kentucky. for "So well has that excellent lady performed her official duties," says the Louisville Courier-Journa- l, "that her nomination and follow as a matter of course." life-lon- g re-eJecti- re-electi- |