HALF a century! What a slow-moving monster in the distance! What a swift-winged bird when it has swept past! What a metamorphosis marks its skimming flight over the earth! It lays millions in their kindred dust, it makes the wilderness "blossom as the rose," and carries the hum of human life far into the vast forests.

Fifty years! What desolation those years brought to the happy occupants of the Hoosick Valley! They are all gone now, and strangers tread the streets that everywhere intersect those beautiful farms. The old Dutch houses have gone to decay, or stand alone in sullen and gloomy aspect, as if frowning upon the new generations who pass by with a smile at the quaint, rude architecture. Where are the thrifty housewives? Where the ever-laboring slaves? Where the frolicking children? Kathleen and her merry troop – where are they all? We will look back through those years and seek them.

The aspect of neatness, industry and prosperity, for which Oak Hill and the opposite valley had been remarkable during the superintendence of the first possessors, gradually gave place to neglect and decay, when the children grew to man and womanhood, with the exception of the few farms where the owners had themselves tilled the soil and educated their sons and daughters in labor and economy. They had been prospered in their diligence and frugality, and were ready to go forth into the world with strong hearts and firm principles of right and truth. But the descendants of those whose inheritance was the gains of slave-labor, exacted under the lash, – who, in youth, looked on in idleness or indifference – who were accustomed to have every order obeyed by attending servants – they became overbearing and reckless, sought pastime in dissipation that destroyed their energies, and squandered the wealth of their fathers, which should have replenished and improved their inheritance. At once incapable and unwilling to adopt the rules of economy and industry that had been the secret of the prosperity of their ancestors, they left the management of their farms to slaves and overseers, who ignorantly impoverished the soil, till it became worthless. Creditors claimed the property, acre by acre, and at last it had all passed from their hands, and they were left in indigence – a burden to themselves, worthless to the world – wanderers without the joy of having worked out the beautiful problem of an existence not lost to mankind, and an interior life of purity and noble aspirations.

Kathleen, remained for years in her home upon the banks of the Hoosick, not exempted from sorrow herself, while she watched with mournful sympathy those whom retribution had overtaken and was fast sweeping away. One was absent from her circle. He had gone long ago to sea, and the last tidings of him were, that he had been captured, with the rest of the crew, by an English man-of-war, and lay a prisoner in the Tower of London. Terence still remained, filling the manly post of protector.

But one stroke, more fearful, more unendurable than all the rest, reached Kathleen in her valley home. It was the death of Colonel Neilson. The trials of her earlier days, the severing of a strong attachment to Ireland, the loss of the dear one of her cherished circle, and the uncertainty of the fate of her eldest born, were light afflictions to the keen agony of surrendering her devoted and noble-souled companion to the silence of eternity. A strong will and an elastic temperament – not Christian fortitude – had enabled her to surmount the depression of her first bereavements. She had not looked heavenward any farther than early education influenced her. She was not prepared for the overwhelming grief – the sudden rending of her very soul – the dismaying vacancy promised in her remaining days. Her own spirit seemed half disengaged in the desperate clinging to the loved one just escaped to immortality. It wavered – it returned – again it half took flight, and again revived her inanimate form. An over-ruling God restored her; the God who mercifully inflicted this crowning sorrow, when all that had gone before failed to secure for her the "pearl of great price." With restored health came a beautiful spirit of faith, love, and resignation, which grew lighter and purer through every trial of her succeeding life. Henceforth she sought to impart to those with whom she mingled the rich, new joy she had found. This was why she was called to the death-bed of the friend, who, at the first coming, had greeted her with a kindly welcome. But what a contrast in the scene that Kathleen looked upon, as she for the last time entered the Van Theusan dwelling to impart comfort, to what she beheld in earlier days, when she entered to seek cheering consolation!

The Van Theusan farm had lost its thriving aspect. The fields were no more waving with full harvests, but were overspread with stinted grass and thistles, and half enclosed by broken fences. The places where the wheel had hummed and busy hands had plied the shuttle, were still and vacant. Even the yard was overgrown with tall, rank weeds, and only a crooked footpath marked the entrance, which, years ago, was gay with parterres of flowers. The house looked weather-beaten and desolate; the old portico was ready to fall under the crushing weight of untrained vines. Within was the same rapid decay that spoke of neglect and poverty. On one side of the hall the rooms were still and empty, the walls damp, mouldy, and stained with the rain that streamed through the crevices and broken windows during every storm. Upon the other side of the hall, an apartment, scantily furnished, had long been occupied by Dame Van Theusan, who had outlived all her family, with the exception of a grand-child, that abandoned her after securing the little remaining property. She felt that the wealth she had bestowed upon her children had borne a curse with it. She reproached herself for the harsh, cruel exactions by which she had gained that wealth. Her conscience gave her no rest as she remembered upon her death-bed that no adequate return had been made to her slaves, for their life-long labor; that she had forgotten to care for their souls, in her eagerness to lay up riches for her children; that she had permitted them to live and die like brutes. It was this terrible awakening of conscience – this remorse for her past life, and the loss of the hope upon which she had relied till now, that made her seek Kathleen's earnest, heart-felt prayers. Kathleen did all in her power to soothe and comfort, but her efforts were of no avail. The dying woman moaned and screamed and prayed for mercy, yet darkness rested upon her soul. No hope dawned upon her, and her dispairing death-shrieks echoed through that lonely home, till her voice died out in the dreadful struggle.

The Hoosick Valley, with all its painful reminiscences and its changes, lost the charm it had for Kathleen in the days of its luxuriance and cheerfulness. She soon sought a home far removed from the scenes of her first twenty years in America.

The fifty years that converted the unassuming hamlet into a flourishing town – that transformed childhood into manhood, and manhood to old age – took from Kathleen all the remaining traces of her beautiful girlhood. They left long streaks of silver in her still abundant dark hair, and marked her face with countless wrinkles, as if in mockery of the freshness and fairness they had chased away; but her eyes were yet sparkling, quick, and expressive, as when in their youthful setting. She was vivacious and mirthful even in her old age – a mirthfulness that arose not from the thoughless indifference of early years, nor from sinking back into a second childhood, but it was the overflow of a glad, Christian spirit; the joy of one that had battled with grief of every nature that had struggled through years of poverty when defrauded of her possessions in her widowhood and had come forth from numberless trials, purified and glowing with a triumphant faith that could exclaim, with cheerful resignation in the deepest afflictions, "Thy will be done." No doubts clouded her spiritual sight. Her religion was no life-long, weeping search after God – no solemn assumption of righteousness; it was an unshaken trust in the Almighty that took away all fear; it was an appreciation of His glory that made her behold the Creator in all his works; it was a love and acceptance of Christ that won for her the fulfillment of the promise,

"If a man love me he will keep my words; and my Father will love him; and we will come unto him and make our abode with him."

Old age is neither a burden, nor an ugliness, nor are weary years to be dreaded, when the soul has thus acquired perpetual youth. Bathed in the "Elixir of Life," it is strong and beautiful. Foolish were the wise men who wasted their years, long ago, wandering over the earth in search of a mysterious fountain whose waters they believed could give them immortal youth, when the talisman was in their own dwellings, or hidden among the musty books of a near convent! And this soul grows more radiant as it nears eternity. The idiocy of old age, though it may darken every other perception, cannot take away the sublime idea of God. There the Christian is triumphant. And if the faculties are retained, they are strengthened and supported by religion. The mind rejects trivial things, and is clothed with a dignity and sublimity of thought that makes manhood, as well as youth, regard the aged pilgrim with veneration.

Kathleen lost none of her keenness of perception as she advanced in years. Powers that might have become dormant were sharpened and cultivated by her diligent study of the Scriptures. Hour after hour she poured over the pages that so wonderfully sound the depths of the human heart. She had found consolation there, in the depth of her sorrow and poverty, and those messages were none the less precious when prosperity overtook her. Her home was with Christine, now the wife of one who diffused freedom and cheerfulness in his household; this daughter had become the mother of a host of smiling, happy faces, and the mistress of a beautiful abode. One of the pleasantest apartments was fitted up for the welcome presence of the venerated mother. It lad all air of comfort and coziness that attracted the children, and there they frolicked and tumbled about her for hours, she looking on with laughter, or quieting them with Bible stories or tales of her own life, that had an exhaustless charm for the listeners. Before she sent them from her she made them kneel around her and say their nightly prayer, impressing upon them the charge to seek the Creator in their youth.

Happy, too, were the merry Christmas holidays when all the descendants, even to the great-grand-children, assembled in the home blessed by her presence. The stately Azile, the good-natured Terence, the chubby little one that had changed to a woman, fair, slight, and quaker-like in her neatness, the image of her ancient quaker grand-mother, yet the matron of twelve sturdy sons and daughters – all were there except Joe, who, in manhood, sailed away upon the sea in command of a gallant ship. They had no more tidings of him, and believed he had gone down to the depths of the ocean, where the beautiful Mary slept with her golden locks outspread and floating,

The little army of grand-children noisily counted over the gifts of Santa Claus, romped and tossed, laughed and shouted, all through the festive holidays, while the matrons chatted over the perfections of their respective young regiments, and Kathleen, busily knitting red and white stockings for the numberless little feet that ran to and fro in the play-room above, talked over old times, looked keenly through her spectacles when listening to the innovations of later days, sympathized in the pursuits and various interests that occupied the minds and hearts of those who had been cradled in her arms long ago, and thanked God for all that was happy and beautiful in their lives.

Thus, marked by festivals, the old year went out, and the new year came in. Then came spring-time. The glad awakening of birds and flowers gave as fresh joy to Kathleen, emerging from her eightieth winter, as to the little fledgeling who tottered after her, and for the first time reached out its fat, dimpled hand to catch the butterflies. Though trembling under the weight of years, she cultivated flowers with as much interest and eagerness as in her girlhood-far more, for now God spoke to her in every delicate petal, in every quivering leaf. "Consider the lilies how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet, I say unto you, Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith!" Such were the words of Christ that involuntarily rose to her lips while she busied her fingers in training perfumed vines, or in freeing her favorite flowers from obtrusive weeds. She loved, too, to watch the gaily plumaged birds building their nests, twittering over the tiny eggs, and gushing forth their sweetest notes in tribute to their Maker; in watching them she remembered that not even a sparrow falls to the ground without the notice of the Father. It was thus she taught the little ones who were always seeking her cheerful presence, to look heavenward. So, too, her wakeful night-hours were whiled away in contemplation of the wonderful glories of the heavens. Reclining upon a bed wheeled near the windows, she looked out upon the star-studded sky and upon the moon, as its mild, soft rays flooded the apartment.

"My beautiful night-lamp never flickers or burns away," she smilingly said to Christine. And while she watched she prayed. Those who slumbered beneath that roof, unconscious, or busy in dreams, little thought they were solemnly borne upon her lips and heart to the throne of God. Those far away – all she loved – were plead for. Oh! who can deem the aged a burden and an unrequited care, when they thus stand upon the watch-towers of a household.

The enthusiasm of Kathleen's youth still animated her. To behold anything beautiful in nature was enough to lighten her eyes and illumine her face with glowing admiration, because, in everything she beheld the Creator. In the morning or evening, in the still midnight or blazing noonday, she read eloquent lessons as plainly as if the pen of fire that traced the doom of Belshazzar upon the royal walls, everywhere wrote for her the kind messages of God.

"Are you a Christian?" asked she of a young man who carelessly leaned against one of the columns of the piazza, where they stood one summer afternoon.

"No," was his reply.

"Do you see the sun going down yonder?" said she, pointing to the glowing sunset. "You are going down to the grave like that. See it sink – sink. You had better prepare."

He could never forget that warning. Every sunset repeated it to him, long after she had gone to the grave.

That same summer, the last thread was woven into the loom of her life. Day after day she sank away, impatiently waiting the welcome summons to immortality. Her children and her children's children assembled around her deathbed. A skillful physician, though an infidel, was also there.

"Ah!" said she to him, impressively, "you need a physician for your soul far more than I need a physician for my body." He turned from her and wept.

Slowly life flickered and burned away. Joyfully she approached the verge of the unseen world, till her earthly torch went out, and her soul emerged into eternal day. Her form has lain in the tomb these many years, but the old Bible, with its well-worn leaves, which brightened her declining life, remains yet, a sacred memento and a happy reminder of many buried years of heroism and suffering, of gladness and love.