The gates ajar. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.

The Gates Ajar. 17I
begged "to hear some of those queer things
people said she believed about heaven." Auntie is never obtrusive with her views on this or
any other matter, but, being thus urged, she
answered a few questions that they put to her,
to the extreme scandal of one or two old ladies,
and the secret delight of the rest.
"Well," said little Mrs. Bland, squeezing
and kissing her youngest, who was at that
moment vigorously employed in sticking very
long darning-needles into his mother's waterfall, "I hope there'11 be a great many babies
there. I should be perfectly happy if I always
could have babies to play with! "
The look that Aunt Winifred shot over at
me was worth seeing.
She merely replied, however, that she supposed all our " highest aspirations," with an
indescribable accent to which Mrs. Bland was
safely deaf, - if good ones, would be realized;
and added,. laughing, that Swedenborg said
that the babies in heaven who outnumber
the grown people -will be given into the
charge of those women especially fond of
them.
" Swedenborg is s-Iggestive, even if you can't
accept what seem to the uninitiated to be his