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Show 82 UNOLE TOM'S CABIN : OR, c1 ~fy dear :v.rarie, don't talk so!" sni~1 St. Clare. "You ought not to grve up the case so, at once. "You have not a. mother's feelings, St. Clare! You never could understand me! -you don't now.'' " But don't talk so, as if it were a gone case ! " "I can't take it as indifferently as you can, St. Clare. If you don't feel when your only child is in this alarming state, I do. It 's a blow too much for me, with all I was bearing before." "It's true," said St. Clare, n that Eva is very delicate, that I always knew; and that she has grown so rapidly as to exhaust her strength; and that her situation is critical. But just now she is only prostrated by the heat of the weather, and by tho excitement of her cousin's visit, and the exertions she made. The physician says there is room for hope.'' "Well, of course, if you can look on the bright side, pray do; it's a mercy if people have n't sensitive feelings, in this world. I am sure I wish I didn't feel as I do; it only makes me completely wretched! I wish I could be as easy as the rest of you ! " And the " rest of them" had good reason to breathe the same prayer, for ~iaric paraded her new misery as the reason and apology for all sorts of inflictions on every one about her. Every word that Wll.'l spoken by anybody, everything that was done or was not done everywhere, was only a new proof that she was surrounded by hard-hearted, insensible beings, who were un~ndful of her peculiar sorrows. Poor Eva heard some of these speeches; and nearly cried her little eyes out, in pity for her mamma, and in sorrow that she should make her so much distress. In a week or two, there was a great improvement of symp· toms,- one of those deceitful lulls, by which her inexomble LH'l!l AMONG 1'1W LOWLY. 83 disease so often beguiles the anxious heart, even on the verge of the grave. Eva's step was again in the garden,- in the balconies; she played and laughed again,- and her father, in a transport, declared that they should soon have her as hearty as anybody. Miss Ophelia and the physician alone felt no encouragement from this illusive truce. There was one other heart, too, that felt the same certainty, and that wll.'l the little heart of Eva. What is it that sometimes speaks in the soul so calmly, so clearly, that its earthly time is short? Is it the secret instinct of decaying nature, or the soul's impulsive throb, as immortality draws on? Be it what it may, it rested in the heart of Eva, a calm, sweet, prophetic certainty that Heaven was ncar ; calm as the Ught of sunset, sweet ll.'l the bright stillness of autumn, there her little heart reposed, only troubled by sorrow for those who loved her so dearly. For the child, though nursed so tenderly, and though life was unfolding before her with every brightness that love and wealth could give, had no regret for herself in dying. In that book which she and her simple old friend bad read so much together, she had seen and taken to her young heart the image of one who loved the little child; and, as she gazed and mused, He had ceased to be an image and a picture of the distant past, and come to be a living, all-surrounding reality. His love enfolded her childish heart with more than mortal tenderness; and it was to Him, she said, she was going, and to his home. But her heart yearned with sad tenderness for all that she was to leave behind. Her father most,- for Eva, though she never distinctly thought so, had un instinctive perception that she was more in his heart than any other. She loved her mother because she was :so loving f\ creature, nnd all the |