Page:Letters of Life.djvu/247

Rh. We now offer you a gift, in the name of our common Redeemer. Stretching our hands to you across the globe, we pray you to be of good courage."

By degrees our band became widely separated, their new homes forming a line of posts from New Hampshire to Georgia. They twined a wreath of remembrances by promising to write to some one of their number, or to me, on the return of the 1st of August. These epistles were often read at our assemblages in the grove. But if some had left our charmed circle, others appeared, claiming a right of representation. Carpets were spread on the fresh, smooth turf, where little forms gambolled, and small, new faces looked up with glad, wondering eyes. Sometimes a joyous prattler would be led to a fair recess, and told that on that spot its mother had placed upon her head a beautiful crown, for being the very best among all good children. Over many brows was stealing a deeper thoughtfulness, from the blessed cares of the mother and housekeeper, the climax of woman's happiness, for which their course of education had striven to give fitness and harmony.

Our anniversary festival, though sometimes omitted by the necessity of circumstances, was observed with more punctuality than could have been naturally anticipated, and always preserved its features of tender interest. The twenty-fifth return of the 1st of August found me on the ocean, a voyager to Europe. Still that