of it all, which was beyond it all.  Another rocket described a wonderful golden curve of grace, then a red light lit all the watching people.  Andrew looked for Ellen and Robert, and saw the girl’s beautiful face turning backward over her lover’s shoulder.  All his life Andrew had been a reader of the Bible, as had his father and mother before him.  To-day, ever since he had heard of his good fortune, his mind had dwelt upon certain verses of Ecclesiastes.  Now he quoted from them.  “Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which He hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity, for that is thy portion in this life and in thy labor which thou takest under the sun.”

Ellen saw her father, and smiled and nodded, then she and her lover passed out of sight.  Another rocket trailed its golden parabola along the sky, and dropped with stars; there was an ineffably sweet strain from the orchestra; the illuminated oaks tossed silver and golden boughs in a gust of fragrant wind.  Andrew quoted again from the old King of Wisdom—­“I withheld not my heart from any joy, for my heart rejoiced in all my labor, and that was my portion of labor.”  Then Andrew thought of the hard winter which had passed, as all hard things must pass, of the toilsome lives of those beside him, of all the work which they had done with their poor, knotted hands, of the tracks which they had worn on the earth towards their graves, with their weary feet, and suddenly he seemed to grasp a new and further meaning for that verse of Ecclesiastes.

He seemed to see that labor is not alone for itself, not for what it accomplishes of the tasks of the world, not for its equivalent in silver and gold, not even for the end of human happiness and love, but for the growth in character of the laborer.

“That is the portion of labor,” he said.  He spoke in a strained, solemn voice, as he had done before.  Nobody heard him except his wife and mother.  His mother gave a sidewise glance at him, then she folded her cape tightly around her and stared at the fireworks, but Fanny put her hand through his arm and leaned her cheek against his shoulder.

THE END