And the strong man armed, who has "fought the good fight," and has "kept the faith," when they that sustained his extended hands through the battle are departing, and no Joshua to bid the declining sun "stand still,” as he looks beyond the rugged hills of the world, and sees a window opened in heaven, and a wounded hand put forth in welcome, lays aside the armor he has worn so long and well, and going down into the dark river, he utters, with a hope glorified to faith, "I shall be over the Jordan to-morrow!"

Before the memory has a tomb in it, before it becomes the cemetery of the soul, - "I shall be " is beautiful as an old ballad. When graves are digged therein, and willows are planted, and hopes are buried, and no light breaks out of the cloud, then "I shall be" is as grand as an old pæan. When

"The battle is done, the harp unstrung,

Its music trembling, dying,"

then "I shall be" is as sublime as an old prophecy!

But there is another tense in this Grammar of Life it were well to remember; the sparkling moment that dances out from the ripening hours, like golden grain, beneath the flails of Time, as we write, and even as we write, is gathered into the great garner of the Past.

AM the owner of great estates. Many of them lie in the West; but the greater part are in

Spain. You may see my western possessions any evening at sunset, when their spires and battlements flash against the horizon.

It gives me a feeling of pardonable importance, as a proprietor, that they are visible, to my eyes at least, from any part of the world in which I chance to be. In my long voyage around the Cape of Good Hope to India (the only voyage I ever made, when I was a boy and a supercargo), if I fell homesick, or sank into a revery of all the pleasant homes I had left behind, I had but to wait until sunset, and then looking toward the west, I beheld my clustering pinnacles and towers brightly burnished as if to salute and welcome me.

So, in the city, if I get vexed and wearied, and cannot find my wonted solace in sallying forth at dinner-time to contemplate the gay world of youth and beauty hurrying

to the congress of fashion, or if I observe that years are deepening their tracks around the eyes of my wife Prue, I go quietly up to the house-top, toward evening, and refresh myself with a distant prospect of my estates. It is as dear to me as that of Eton to the poet Gray; and, if I sometimes wonder at such moments whether I shall find those realms as fair as they appear, I am suddenly reminded that the night-air may be noxious, and, descending, I enter the little parlor where Prue sits stitching, and surprise that precious woman by exclaiming, with the poet's pensive enthusiasm, –

"Thought would destroy their Paradise,

Columbus, also, had possessions in the West; and as I read aloud the romantic story of his life, my voice quivers when I come to the point in which it is related that sweet odors of the land mingled with the sea-air, as the admiral's fleet approached the shores; that tropical birds flew out and fluttered around the ships, glittering in the sun, the gorgeous promises of the new country; that boughs, perhaps with blossoms not all decayed, floated out to welcome the strange wood from which the craft were hollowed. Then I cannot restrain myself. I think of the gorgeous visions I have seen before I have even undertaken the journey to the West, and I cry aloud to Prue,

"What sun-bright birds, and gorgeous blossoms, and celestial odors will float out to us, my Prue, as we approach our western possessions!"

The placid Prue raises her eyes to mine with a reproof so delicate that it could not be trusted to words; and, after a moment, she resumes her knitting, and I proceed.

These are my western estates, but my finest castles are in Spain. It is a country famously romantic, and my castles are all of perfect proportions, and appropriately set in the most picturesque situations. I have never been to Spain myself, but I have naturally conversed much with travellers to that country; although, I must allow, without deriving from them much substantial information about my property there. The wisest of them told me that there were more holders of real estate in Spain than in any other region he had ever heard of, and they are all great proprietors. Every one of them possesses a multitude of the stateliest castles. From conversation with them you easily gather that each one considers his own castles much the largest and in the loveliest positions. And, after I had heard this said, I verified it, by discovering that all my immediate neighbors in the city were great Spanish proprietors.

One day as I raised my head from entering some long and tedious accounts in my books, and began to reflect that the quarter was expiring, and that I must begin to prepare the balance-sheet, I observed my subordinate in office, but not in years, (for poor old Titbottom will never see sixty again!) leaning on his hand, and much abstracted.

"Are you not well, Titbottom?" asked I.

"Perfectly, but I was just building a castle in Spain," said he.

I looked at his rusty coat, his faded hands, his sad

eye, and white hair for a moment, in great surprise, and then inquired, --

"Is it possible that you own property there too?"

He shook his head silently; and still leaning on his hand, and with an expression in his eye as if he were looking upon the most fertile estate of Andalusia, he went on making his plans; laying out his gardens, I suppose, building terraces for the vines, determining a library with a southern exposure, and resolving which should be the tapestried chamber.

"What a singular whim," thought I, as I watched Titbottom, and filled up a check for four hundred dollars, my quarterly salary, "that a man who owns castles in Spain should be deputy book-keeper at nine hundred dollars a year!"

When I went home I ate my dinner silently, and afterwards sat for a long time upon the roof of the house, looking at my western property, and thinking of Titbottom.

It is remarkable that none of the proprietors have ever been to Spain to take possession and report to the rest of us the state of our property there. I, of course, cannot go, I am too much engaged. So is Titbottom. And I find it is the case with all the proprietors. We have so much to detain us at home that we cannot get away. But it is always so with rich men. Prue sighed once as she sat at the window and saw Bourne, the millionnaire, the president of innumerable companies, and manager and director of all the charitable societies in town, going by with wrinkled brow and hurried step. I asked her why she sighed.