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By and By.--There is enough music in these three words for the burden of a song. There is a hope wrapped up in them, an articulate beat of the human heart.

By and by? We heard it as long ago as we can remember, when we made brief but perilous journeys from chair to table, and from table to chair again.

We heard it the other day, when two parted who had been loving in their lives, one to the south, the other to our lonely home.

Everybody says it some time or other. The boy whispers it to himself, when he dreams of exchanging the stubbed little shoes for boots like a man.

The man murmurs it--when in life's watch he sees his plans half finished, and his hopes yet in the bud waving in cold late spring.

The old man says it when he thinks of putting off the mortal for the immortal, to-day for to-morrow.

The weary watcher of the morning, whiles away the dark hours with "by and by--by and by."

Sometimes it sounds like a song; sometimes there is a sigh or a sob in it. What wouldn't the world give to find it in the almanacs--set down somewhere, no matter if in the dead of December, to know that it would surely come. But, fairy like as it is, flitting like a star-beam over the dewy shadows of the year--no body can spare it--and when we look back upon the many times these words have beguiled us, the memory of that silver by and by is like the sunrise of Ossian--"pleasant but mournful to the soul."