These friends, whom he has given us in this our darkest hour, are the truest friends we have yet known.

Is it not a sweet compensation for all we lose, to be near them still, and to have the good a kind Father dispenses come to us through their hands?
Dear husband! in this night of worldly life, a star of celestial beauty has already mirrored itself in my heart, and made light one of its hitherto darkened chambers." "Sweet philosopher!" murmured her husband, in a softened voice.

"A spirit like yours would illuminate a dungeon." "If it can make the air bright around my husband, its happiness will be complete," was softly answered.
"But these reverses are hard to bear," said Mr.Markland, soberly.
"Harder in anticipation than in reality.

They may become to us blessings." "Blessings?
Oh, Agnes! I am not able to see that.

It is no light thing for a man to have the hard accumulations of his best years swept from him in a moment, and to find himself, when just passing the meridian of his life, thrown prostrate to the earth." "There may be richer treasures lying just beneath the surface where he has fallen, than in all the land of Ophir toward which he was pressing in eager haste," said Mrs.Markland.
"It may be so." Markland spoke doubtingly.
"It must be so!" was emphatically rejoined.