CONCLUSION.

And now we must draw our story to a close. The reader has become acquainted with its characters, and knows about the agencies for good which are at work in the manufacturing town of Squantown, as well as the influences brought to bear upon the Christian development of our boys and girls. The machinery is all adjusted, the power is applied, the wheels are in motion nothing can hinder continued and beneficent work, except the possible weariness in well-doing of any of the parts, and the failure to look to God in faith for his promised strength, thus cutting off the connection with the source of all good things. So long as manufacturers and operatives, teachers and scholars, pastors and people continue in all their ways to acknowledge God, this will not be the case; and the manufacturing village will realize the scriptural idea: “Happy is that people that is in such a case: yea, happy is that people whose God is the Lord.”

We may expect to look ahead and see the boys and girls with whom we are acquainted, growing up into good, useful, and happy men and women. Bertie Sanderson will, little by little, overcome her natural and acquired faults of character. Envy and malice have already received their death blow, vanity and idleness will follow in their train. The higher interests of Christian love and church-work will dwarf the importance of dress and display, and Bertie will grow into a useful girl, faithful to, and contented with, her position a help to her mother at home, a good example to Nina and the younger children.

We may expect to see Gretchen growing into a strong, sturdy German woman, sending home from time to time the savings of her earnings, which will help to make her far-off brothers and sisters very comfortable, the deep, though quiet, force of her affections expanding themselves to embrace many others on this side of the sea. We may be sure that her constant nature, upheld by divine grace, will never lose its hold of the Saviour who came to take care of her in answer to her Sunday-school teacher’s call that Sunday evening when she seemed to be so near to the other world.

We may hope to see the other members of Miss Etta’s class, Miss Eunice’s tea-party, and the “Do Good Society,” all growing wiser and better as they grow older, and becoming more and more Christ-like as they follow in his steps. And we may be sure that Etta Mountjoy, cured of her erratic moods and wayward temper, first by being anchored to the rock of ages, and then by the safeguards and helps which the church of Christ throws around its members, will be still foremost in leading the little phalanx, her energy and enthusiasm insuring success in every good thing undertaken. She will find time for home duties as well as those of a more public kind, will be a right hand to Eunice as she continues on the even tenor of her way, and the sunshine of home to her father and brother James, until some good man discovers the sunshine and bears it away with him to be the illumination of another circle and the centre of another home.

We may see “Mr. James” still the considerate Christian mill-owner, conducting business on the strictest principles of integrity, and treating his employees as though of the same flesh and blood as himself, for whose bodies and souls he is in some measure responsible. And when at length Eunice drops the housekeeping into the hands of “Mrs. James,” we may be sure that she, as well as her husband, will continue to “honor God with their substance” and “in all their ways acknowledge him.”

If we turn our prophetic gaze upon the Robertson family, we shall find that the mother thereof is gradually exchanging her grumbling and forebodings of evil for hope and thankfulness at the success and good prospects of her children, who are profiting largely by the opportunities afforded them by their uncle’s kindness.

While greatly missing her from her home, the mother does not feel Katie’s absence as she would have done but for the girl boarders, who, while affording her both society and support, give her such ample occupation that she has little time to realize her loneliness or to indulge in fretfulness. Indeed, Tessa has already forestalled her future position, and become to the widow as a beloved daughter. The sweetness and softness of the Southern girl fit her to take culture and refinement very easily. She quickly assimilates with her surroundings, and models herself upon those she loves and admires who are, in this instance, Katie Robertson and Etta Mountjoy. From the first, bold, bright Eric has felt the charm of her black eyes, and loved to listen to her soft, foreign accent, and it would not be surprising if, when he reaches the height of his ambition, and becomes either superintendent of the bindery or first foreman of the mill, he should ask Italian Tessa to share both his name and his success. But that is a great way off.

Katie is our first friend. With her character and fortune we have the most to do. It would be nice, did the limits of our volume allow, to follow her into her new school-life, to see how her energy, industry, independence, and cheerfulness go with her, rebuking homesickness, and causing her to make the most of every moment, and the best of every advantage. We should see that her path at school is not all strewn with roses, any more than was that at the mill; that different circumstances bring different temptations and develop different traits of character. We might perhaps find that silly school-girls at first decline to admit on terms of perfect equality one who had “worked for her living,” and was, in their not very elegant parlance, “nothing but a mill-girl.” Perhaps we might have to chronicle some lonely and sad hours in consequence, and some rebellious feelings hard to be kept down.

But Katie’s life is in the keeping of One wise enough to arrange all its discipline, “as it may be most expedient for her,” loving enough to sympathize with and comfort her in all times of sorrow and perplexity, and able with every temptation to make also a way of escape.

So, guarded and guided, Katie Robertson will be able to live down all that foolish and proud girls may say about her, and in the end become a favorite, not only with the wise, discriminating teachers, but also with warm-hearted, if wrong-headed, companions. We believe that throughout life, as in its beginning, she will continue to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,” and that, as she daily endeavors “in all her ways to acknowledge him,” he will “give her the desires of her heart.”