the angels smiled to see...

I am sure everyone is anxiously awaiting the fate of Ulrich the Norwegian Immigrant...We left him and his family having just been taken in by Mr. and Mrs. White, the moral "infidels."  William Henry Channing goes on to describe some of the reforms these good people have instituted.  The results...

"Four months or more had passed away. The boys had put aside their skates, thrown stones through the rotting ice, and paddled on boards along the canal; the crows skimming on low wings flew over the meadows ; the blackbirds in crowded orchestra chanted their chorus to spring on the beaches and maples ; in low grounds the long bending willows began to show their yellow green; and wind flowers opened their graceful bells in sunny nooks; once again the locks were to be opened, and canal boats awoke from their winter's sleep. Bugles blew a merry note, flags waved, stages rattled, loaded carts bore the accumulated goods from bursting storehouses, lazy hands were drawn from the pockets, loungers became bustling business men ; all were alive and laughing and eager in the warm bright morning ; when a little heart scene was acted in Mr. White's parlor, that angels smiled to see.

A good Norwegian priest who had left his own land to follow with words of comfort and counsel the scattered brethren of his church in America, had arrived from his winter's journeying at , and visited among others Ulric and his family. The whole dammed up river of their gratitude, which they had no words to tell in English, had been poured into his confiding bosom; nnd now when they were to bid farewell to their benefactors, he had come with them as their interpreter. There they stood, dressed in their native costume, neat though threadbare, parents and children hand in hand, and their honored pastor in front. And just risen from the breakfast table surprised and full of sensibility, at once joyful and sad, the good patriarch and his wife with a little boy whom they had adopted clinging round them, came forward with their welcome. There were too many thoughts and feelings on both sides for much speaking. Warm pressures of the hands, smiles mingling in the tears like gleams amid the showers, thanks spoken with sobs and deep tones in their broken tongue; and then as by one impulse the grateful band knelt down, and their minister in words simple and sweet, and gushing warm from the heart, called down the blessings of heaven upon those who had smoothed the path for weary feet, and been brother and sister to wanderers far away from fatherland and kindred. What heralds are such scenes of mankind's reunion upon earth in one great family, with one name and speech ; what prophecies of the grand reunion of all spirits hereafter in the mansions of our Heavenly Father."

Blessings