Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/355

340 Why had she marked that verse now? did she feel as if from her that land was not so very far off? And the next day, as I bade my mother good-bye, I whispered in her ear, “Will Cousin Miriam die, mother; is she going to leave us soon?” and my mother answered, “I hope not, Willie—I trust not. Not yet,” she added (as if speaking to herself), “O God! not yet;” and all my heart echoed, “not yet.”

And then I went away with a hope and a fear growing side by side in my heart; but even as I watched them growing I saw that the hope had taken the deepest root. It is ever so with us; thank God, it is ever so. Wild and bitter must be the storm, sharp and sudden the uprooting, that can deprive us of that priceless tree of life which God’s hand has planted in the midst of our human garden. Is it not an emblem of that other tree, growing by the river-side, in the midst of His Paradise, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations? and are not nations made up of human hearts?

Only eight weeks, Miriam and I had said to each other, on that last evening, only eight weeks; yet how slowly they seemed to pass; slowly to me, counting week by week, day by day. At last they were ended, and I left off counting; and once more the glad Christmas-time came, and once more I was at home again. How well I remember that home-coming, so different from all the others that had gone before it. My father meeting me at the door alone; the empty drawing-room, silent, deserted, and dreary, though the warm winter fire was shedding around and on everything the same bright living light it had shed there many, many Christmases; and things were in their old places, and nothing was changed; every thing was just where it had always been, except Miriam. She never left her room now (my father said), and my mother watched beside her night and day.

Could we live without her now? It was years since we had ceased to ask each other that question, now we must ask it once more, yet not to each other, but to God; we must ask Him for strength to enable us to answer it according to His will, not ours.

And so through all that Christmas week we watched the quiet waning of her life, like the waning of a summer moon. Calmly, hopefully, without the shadow of one passing cloud to cross its brightness, we watched it fade away before the golden sunrise of that other life which is for ever. And when our watch was ended we could but sit and weep for our loss; but soon there came to stay our tears the thought of how she was among the angels, joining all their praise, in the land where the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing. So now, Grace, can you wonder why it was I was so anxious that our little daughter there should be called Miriam,—can you wonder, Grace?

Grand Trunk Railway of Canada—one of the most shaky and rickety in the world—is not, at the outset, the most pleasing of routes whereby to commence a journey homewards; a train, or at least a “bullgine” (engine), running off the track being an event of quite ordinary occurrence. We arrived at Montreal on the morning of the 26th of March, well dusted, and jostled almost to death, but with appetites sharpened by the involuntary exercise which we had been taking day and night; so, in company with a “skedaddler” from a Michigan cavalry regiment, I adjourned to the Miranda “Hotel,” so called. The small bar room was crowded by a host of Lower Canadian habitants, with a sprinkling of some half-dozen chattering Frenchwomen. Hungry and tired, I entered the dining-room, a dirty little apartment about ten feet square, in which my head, albeit that of a short man, nearly touched the ceiling, while my olfactory nerves were sorely discomposed. Huge chumps of bread were distributed round the table, at one end of which was a tureen of black bean-soup, and at the other a large dish of fish, which might have been fresh a week before; so, hungry as I was, I hastily quitted the company. A few doors from the Miranda, I discovered a phlegmatic German, stout and greasy withal, busily employed in the concoction of saveloys, Bologna sausages, &c., from whom I made a few rapid purchases, with which, and a pocket-pistol in the shape of a brandy-bottle, I hurried to catch the train, then almost on the point of starting from Montreal for Island Pond.

On the way we formed some new acquaintances bound for home by the same steamer with ourselves. Among them were an old farmer and his son, on their road from the far backwoods to Dublin, to inherit an income of 700l. a year; and a veteran Irishman “skedaddling” from the New York cavalry. From Montreal to Portland (Maine) the railroad is even worse than that portion of it which traverses Canada West; and on our arrival, at midnight, at that miserable locality called Island Pond, I was black and blue. We were escorted to a dilapidated building—a perfect dog-hole, yclept an hotel; it was worse than any backwoods shanty, Irish shebeen, or under ground habitation into which I have crept in the course of my wandering life. The Yankees,