Passing Away

[From our story of "The Two Brides," we take a scene, in which some one sorrowing as those without hope may find words of consolation.]

IN the very springtime of young womanhood, the destroyer had come; and though he laid his hand upon her gently at first, yet the touch was none the less fatal. But, while her frail body wasted, her spirit remained peaceful. As the sun of her natural life sunk low in the sky, the bright auroral precursor of another day smiled along the eastern verge of her spiritual horizon. There was in her heart neither doubt, nor fear, nor shrinking.

"Dear Marion!" said Anna, dropping a tear upon her white transparent hand, as she pressed it to her lips, a few weeks after the alarming hemorrhage just mentioned; "how can you look at this event so calmly?"

They had been speaking of death, and Marion had alluded to its approach to Anna, with a strange cheerfulness, as if she felt it to be nothing more than a journey to another and far pleasanter land than that wherein she now dwelt.

"Why should I look upon this change with other than tranquil feelings?" she asked.

"Why? How can you ask such a question, sister?" returned Anna. "To me, there has been always something in the thought of death that made the blood run cold about my heart."

"This," replied Marion, with one of her sweet smiles, "is because your ideas of death have been, from the first, confused and erroneous. You thought of the cold and pulseless body; the pale winding-sheet; the narrow coffin, and the deep, dark grave. But, I do not let my thoughts rest on these. To me, death involves the idea of eternal life. I cannot think of the one without the other. Should the chrysalis tremble at the coming change?--the dull worm in its cerements shrink from the moment when, ordained by nature, it must rise into a new life, and expand its wings in the sunny air? How much less cause have I to tremble and shrink back as the hour approaches when this mortal is to put on immortality?"

"Yours is a beautiful faith," said Anna. "And its effects, as seen now that the hour from which all shrink approaches, are strongly corroborative of its truth."

"It is beautiful because it is true," replied Marion. "There is no real beauty that is not the form of something good and true."

"If I were as good as you, I might not shrink from death," remarked Anna, with a transient sigh.

"I hope you are better than I am, dear; and think you are," said Marion.

"Oh, no!" quickly returned Anna.

"Do you purpose evil in your heart?" asked Marion, seriously.

Anna seemed half surprised at the question.

"Evil! Evil! I hope not," she replied, as a shadow came over her face.

"It is an