The gates ajar. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.

192 The Gates Ajar.
XIII.
August 3.
The summer is sliding quietly away, - my
desolate summer which I dreaded; with the
dreams gone from its wild flowers, the crown
from its sunsets, the thrill from its winds and
its singing.
But I have found out a thing. One can live
without dreams and crowns and thrills.
I have not lost them. They lie under the
ivied cross with Roy for a little while. They
will come back to me with him. "Nothing is
lost," she teaches me. And until they come
back, I see - for she shows me - fields groaning under their white harvest, with laborers
very few. Ruth followed the sturdy reapers,
gleaning a little. I, perhaps, can do as much.
The ways in which I must work seem so small
and insignificant, so pitifully trivial sometimes,
that I do not even like to write them down
here. In fact, they are so small that, six
months ago, I did not see them at all. Only
to be pleasant to old Phcebe, and charitable to