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THE EASTER VISION OF THE BROTHER SACRISTAN.

BY SUSAN L. EMERY.

All along the Connecticut valley the snows were melting in the mild spring air; up in the balmy heavens the robin and lark sang clear; in the woods the trailing arbutus was blooming as fragrant and fair as its Plymouth Rock sisters beside the sea, and the sturdy little hepatica and frail wind-anemone nodded joyously to each other, for the happy days had come. Do we think the birds and flowers know nothing about Easter? Oh! anybody can see them keep it, who has eyes to see it! All nature is singing glad anthems to tell that Christ is risen with the Spring.

In the great city the stately churches were flooded with melody from organ and flute and viol, and the surpliced choirs chanted glad and gay "Alleluia! Alleluia!" Magnificent altars were ablaze with manifold brilliant tapers, while glorious white lilies. bent their fragrant chalices towards the one fairer chalice which the Precious Blood of the Risen Redeemer made more wonderfully fair than any pen can sing or pencil paint.

In the famous Jesuit church of the Gesu, famed throughout the old primatial city for its decorations of extraordinary loveliness, men said one to another: "Brother Rodriguez has surpassed himself to-day. The church. was never so divinely beautiful before." And at High Mass the good Brother, hidden in a secluded nook behind the pulpit, looked with dim and dazzled gaze at the grandeur. It had grown to its perfection slowly, all night, under his practised eye and skilful hand, straight from his artist brain and holy heart of love; and he prayed beneath his breath:

"My Risen Jesu! this is all for Thee. Surely I never worked like this before. All praise to Thy Sacred Heart! Is any church of Thine, to-day, more beautiful, and hast Thou any Sacristan more favored and more glad than I, unworthy though I be?"

A strange thing happened then to Brother Rodriguez, the like of which also, in all his long and arduous career as Sacristan, had never before befallen him. Already, that day, he had served three Masses and he had been awake all night, besides; but that was nothing unusual. Then, as usual also, he had crept for High Mass into that quiet corner where no eye could see him, that he might, for one brief hour, after his many hours of Martha-like devotion, take the part of Mary, and sit in loving silence at Je sus' feet. There, for once, and I do not think his loving Lord laid it up against His tired and faithful servant, the Brother Sacristan fell fast asleep.

He fell asleep while the choir was singing the Easter sequence; and, by the way, he always stoutly maintained that he was not sleeping and that good Father Baptiste, going up the pulpit stairs on his way to the sermon, only saw his eyes closed because he was so moved by the Easter sermon joy. His eyes closed then, to express the situation more exactly just as the singers. cried out to one another joyously, as deep might call to deep on Easter Day, or Star to Star:

"Dic nobis, Maria,
Quid vidsti in via?

Sepulchrum Christi viventis

Et glorian vidi resurgentis." And when he opened his eyes again, the singers were still tossing the

THE EASTER VISION OF THE BROTHER SACRISTAN.

"Amen, Alleluia," back and forth to each other, and up to radiant Heaven, where the angels caught the echo, and treasured it close into the heart of their own Easter Alleluias around the Throne of the Risen God on high. So you see, if he were really sleeping, it was for a brief space only; and if it was an answer to his simple-hearted prayer, and was a vision, truly time counts for little or nothing in ecstatic states like his.

In either case, the glorious sanctuary of the Gesu vanished from the enraptured gaze of the Brother Sacristan, and the jubilant chant of boys and men died away on the fragrant air. Instead, he saw or seemed to see the fair Connecticut valley, with the broad peaceful river winding through it, and he thought that somehow its waters made very glad that Easter Day the Holy City of God. The green hills towered beyond it, up into the sunshine; and, through the grassy meadows, up upon the rocky banks, and into copse and thicket, went a little maiden, holy and fair, though lame and hunch-backed. She was picking anemones and hepaticas and the fragrant, pink and white, hairy buds of the trailing arbutus; and she was saying, as she went, over and over again, only this: "For My Risen Jesus!" But such intensity of love and faith was in it, that Brother Rodriguez cried out in his sleep-or in his ecstasy-very humbly: "Give me, O my Lord Jesus! give me the heart of a little child!"

What singing he heart! The sweetest boy-soprano who ever sang "O Paradise" at the Gesu, never sang like that. Hundreds of tiny cherubs that never knew one care and never saw aught but joy and the beauty of holiness, were singing blithely; and as he heard them, every pain or anxiety the Brother Sacristan had ever known of fled away from him as completely as though it had never been:

"Dic nobis, Maria!

Dic nobis, Maria!

Quid vidiste, in via, Maria, Maria?"

The dear child made no answer, and it seemed to him they needed none. She only went on gathering hepatica and anemone and arbutus, and repeating, untired and most tenderly: "For Thee, My Risen Jesus; for Thee, for Thee, for Thee!" Then river and hill and thicket and meadow vanished, and the child and he were in a little upper room of a little farmhouse near the Windsor River Locks.

He saw a simple table draped in snowy white, with two wax candles burning; white curtained windows, hcly pictures, and the early field flowers of the spring-time lavished everywhere. He saw the little maiden scatter them on floor and table with love like to the angels. Then he saw, on the plain linen cloth, on an opened corporal, a pyx case, and he knew that the Real Presence of the Living Christ was there. And it seemed to him it was the midnight before Easter, and the little maid was Christ's Sacristan, like Magdalene, all alone, all, all alone, with her Blessed Lord.

Holding the last few fragrant sprays of Mary's flowers, the spring arbutus, close clasped to her faithful heart, she knelt at last before the table, her loving labors ended. There was silence now, no singing, no grandeur, and no glory. But he thought he heard the Lord's voice say "Maria!" and it seemed to Brother Rodriguez that Heaven was in this place. He thought the little Sacristan knelt down as the clock struck midnight, and he thought she still knelt there, and he saw her, through all the Easter brightness of that night of which it is written: "The night shall be as light as day.". Yet, suddenly, he saw that holy peace no longer. Again he heard the famous. boy choir of the Gesu chanting: "Amen, Alleluia!" and suddenly he saw the beauty of his own sanctuary, that his own loving heart had designed and accomplished, flash faiand glorious again upon his dazzled eyes. Was it a dream?

On Easter Monday, Father Bap

tiste came in with another Father just returned from giving a Mission. "I brought him to see the Easter decorations, Brother," the Superior said, pleasantly. "Father Van Kirk had nothing of this sort at all, where he spent Easter."

"No, Brother," Father Van Kirk continued, "I was in the Connecticut Valley, near your own native land and mine, though further South. I had a sick-call, and was detained all night in a farm-house; and I had a little maid of thirteen years for my Sacristan, with a humped back but an angel's face. I believe she watched all night with our Lord, to my shame I say it. But we had no glorious dec

orations like yours, Brother; only field flowers, and the wild birds singing. And I had to travel ten miles to say my Mass in the poorest country church. Well, God has given you a great gift for making His house beautiful, Brother."

"And He uses it always for God's greater glory," Father Baptiste added; but the Brother Sacristan most humbly bent his head.

"I have seen," he said "a place where the Lord's feet rested, that was far more beautiful than this is; and a Sacristan far more favored and holy than this unworthy Brother can hope on earth to be."

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A TALE OF THE

REVOLUTION.

BY HENRY AUSTIN ADAMS, M. A.

CHAPTER XX

To the perfect comprehending the incidents of that so tragic day, it now behooveth us to return to that moment in which we have seen the youthful trooper slain in the midst of his reveries, and Major Major Victor Weston making so furiously toward Waverly upon the dead lad's charger.

The too ill-boding appearing of Sergeant Darlington upon the scene, while it gave cause for the most serious alarm, furnished the eager lover with just that show of reason for coming to Waverly Grange, the want of which had made it expedient for him. to avail himself of the services of an agent in the person of Colonel Saunderson. Now, however, that no less. terrible danger threatened the peace, or even the life, of the family at the Grange, than an invasion by the infamous free-booters, commanded by the notorious Sergeant, our cavalier might hope that the weight and timeliness of his alarm would more than suffice to excuse his presence, and afford him the desired opportunity of speaking to his mistress without subjecting her to the peril of the nocturnal meeting. Familiar from his birth with the least frequented foot-paths and woodland by-ways, the officer calculated that he would reach the Grange at least ten minutes before the troop, which at a slower pace was keeping to the more circuitous highway. And indeed, it was so. As his powerful horse felt the grateful check and came to a stand in the shadow of a clump of lilacs not many yards from the green-houses at Waverly, the company under Sergeant Darlington was still pounding along the turn

pike, the better part of a league away.

Weston, with a quick glance in the direction of the mansion, dismounted, tied his horse, and was upon the point of hurrying across the strip of open sward, when the flutter of a gown attracted him, and he beheld my daughter, Madeleine, coming around the angle of the long rose house.

Coughing, to warn her of his nearness, the lover sprang from the cover of the lilacs and signalled silence to startled lady.

Dropping the book she chanced to carry in her hand, Miss Broadbent ran toward the spot where, as if in some fancy of a dream, she had beheld her lover.

But ere she reached it, he had disappeared, and, as the sudden apparition had made her head swim, she would no doubt have swooned, had Major Weston not instantly returned. and carried her within the safe seclusion of the clump of trees.

"Is it, indeed, you, Victor?" saith the lady, when her heart did suffer her to find the words.

"Aye, Madeleine, it is I certainly.' "And wherefore come you nowand so disguised? I thought

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"Did I not tell you that you must not think," saith he, kissing away the conclusion of her sentence.

"But the danger, Victor."

"Ha, ha, ha; Darling, ye would have me turn poltroon, or stay-athome."

"Nay, Victor, nay, but I am told. that hereabouts they carry on the war too much in these disguises and deceits, and that it shall go hard with any one discovered playing spy."

"Truly! Short justice and a noose await the luckless spy; but as I am

not spy nor without luck, what skills it? But by my love for you, I was forgetting that which brought me here." Changing his tone and air from that of a devoted and caressing lover, to one more serious and soldierly, he saith:

"Do you remember him that did arrest your father?"

"Merciful heavens! yes! He often frights my dreams. What of him?"

"He and his crew of cut-throats are on the high-road now and not a mile away."

"And coming hither?"

"Yes! Is your father here?"

"Alas! he is, and he hath grown so irritated by these continual insults, that he will surely give these men a most uncivil welcome."

"Warn him, then, Madeleine, for it is best that I remain unseen by this marauding Sergeant."

"Why, would he not be influenced by you his fellow-his superior officer?"

"I fear not," answers Weston, coloring.

"Then I must go at once! There is one place to which my father can escape, where they shall never find him. Meanwhile, wait for me here, but something deeper in the thicketpromise me, my own!"

The officer with a prolonged embrace, suffered the lady to depart, but scarcely was she gone from view beyond the rose house, when she came running back. She was too late. "Victor! For God's sake, go you; go you! The troopers have this moment galloped across the lawn, and even now are calling loudly for my father." "Then heaven defend them all! Nor be alarmed unnecessarily, sweetheart, for I do verily believe the object of the visit is not the molestation of the Grange."

"What then?"

"A noted officer of the King's forces, it is believed, is hiding hereabouts."

"Then by all means let us assist the

uncouth Sergeant once that his purposcs be so commendable."

"By all means, Madeleine; yet not by the rash or ill-digested measures. I came here to enlist your aid. This miserable disguise which I so loathe, this dodging behind thickets, these secret, indirect manoeuvres, distasteful though they be, are called for by the exigencies of the case. My being in the neighborhood is caused by business of the utmost weight."

"Ah, my brave, noble-hearted Victor! How much I wronged you in those early days when you half-heartedly did seem to lean to the King's side. Do you remember those meetings in the Abbey? And how you played at treason with the reverend clergy?"

"That was before I fully understood the issue." says Weston, not looking at the lady; "but when I did, hath any officer done more for independence than myself?"

"No! Nor one-half so much, my knight my the last word was lost in an embrace.

"It is of those same most absurd and treasonable meetings at the Abbey that I must now speak, Madeleine. Have you the packet of important papers which I once gave you?"

"I gave them, as you know, to Doctor Seabury, but on the coming of his own great difficulties, he did entrust them to Doctor Mowberly."

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"Where be they now?" "The long rolled package "Aye, the maps, the maps!" "Are still in Doctor Mowberly's safe keeping. The other papers I, myself, did hide in one of the recesses of the Abbey steps."

"So I did half remember."

"But why incur this risk to get those old reminders of your degenerate days?" laughing.

"There did you touch the point! Those papers be indeed reminders, with power to bring me to an hempen

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