Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/385

Rh The Jothun histories belong now to our daily bread, and new ones come up every day. With Mr. S., the pale minister, I do not, however, talk about such things, but, on the contrary, of theology and Swedenborgology. We dispute a little, but I find so much to learn from the crystaline truth and beauty of his soul, that I have more pleasure in listening to its quiet expression than in maintaining my own arguments. He is one of the quiet in the land, whose lives are their best teaching. He still sorrows deeply for his departed wife.

“People do not know how sufficiently to value the blessings of matrimony,” said he to me on one occasion. “We do not live in marriage up to the height of that happiness and that life, which we nevertheless hold in our own hand.”

Miss Harriet, the eldest sister of Mrs. S., an excellent, stout, grave, elderly lady, near upon sixty, does not make her appearance till dinner, and but very seldom in the drawing-room. On the contrary, I often found that she had some employment in my room, in my chest of drawers, and about my wash-stand, and that it was done stealthily, which appeared to me a little extraordinary, until I put in connection with it another extraordinary thing, and thus by means of the latter was able to explain the former. I discovered, namely, in my drawers, that a collar or a pair of muslin sleeves which I had laid aside because they had become somewhat too grey for wear, had re-assumed, by some inexplicable means, their pure white colour, and lay there fresh washed and ironed as if of themselves. In the same way I found that the old collar had been mended, and still more, a new collar exhibited itself trimmed with real lace, and a new pair of muslin sleeves which had never been there before, but which were exactly of the kind that I wore,—and for all that. Miss Harriet, when I met her, looked as grave as ever, and just as if she would say that she never concerned herself with other people's