In these hopes I have lived, and in these hopes I will die.”  “I have no consolation to offer to you,” said I, “for you need none.”  She quoted many of the passages which have been, through all ages, the chief stay of sorrowing humanity; and I thought the words of Scripture had never sounded so solemn or so sweet before.  “I shall often come to see you,” I said, “to hear a chapter in the Bible, for you know it far better than I.”

No sooner had I taken my leave, than I was informed that an old lady of my acquaintance had summoned me in haste.  She said she was much impressed by this extraordinary calamity.  As, to my certain knowledge, she had never troubled the contents of the book, I was surprised that she had so taken to heart the loss of that which had, practically, been lost to her all her days.  “Sir” said she, the moment I entered, “the Bible, the Bible.”  “Yes, madam,” said I, “this is a very grievous and terrible visitation.  I hope we may learn the lessons which it is calculated to teach us.”  “I am sure,” answered she, “I am not likely to forget it for a while, for it has been a grievous loss to me.”  “I told her I was very glad.”  “Glad!” she rejoined.  “Yes,” I said, “I am glad to find that you think it so great a loss, for that loss may then be a gain indeed.  There is, thanks be to God, enough left in our memories to carry us to heaven.”  “Ah! but,” said she, “the hundred pounds and the villany of my maid-servant.  Have you not heard?” This gave me some glimpse as to the secret of her sorrow.  She told me that she had deposited several bank-notes in the leaves of her family Bible, thinking that, to be sure, nobody was likely to look there for them.  “No sooner,” said she, “were the Bibles made useless by this strange event, than my servant peeped into every copy in the house, and she now denies that she found any thing in my old family Bible, except two or three blank leaves of thin paper, which, she says, she destroyed; that, if any characters were ever on them, they must have been erased when those of the Bible were obliterated.  But I am sure she lies; for who would believe that Heaven took the trouble to blot out my precious bank-notes.  They were not God’s word, I trow.”  It was clear that she considered the “promise to pay” better by far than any “promises” which the book contained.  “I should not have cared so much about the Bible,” she whined, hypocritically, “because, as you truly observe, our memories may retain enough to carry us to heaven,”—­a little in that case would certainly go a great way, I thought to myself,—­“and if not, there are those who can supply the loss.  But who is to get my bank-notes back again?  Other people have only lost their Bibles.”  It was, indeed, a case beyond my power of consolation.