"Oh dear! oh dear! where shall we be In eighteen hundred and forty-three?

"Oh dear! oh dear! we shall be no more In eighteen hundred and forty-four,

"Oh dear! oh dear! we sha'n't be alive In eighteen hundred and forty-five."

I thought it audacious in her, since surely she and all of us were aware that the world would come to an end some time, in some way, for every one of us. I said to myself that I could not have "made up" those rhymes. Nevertheless we all laughed at them together.

A comet appeared at about the time of the Miller excitement, and also a very unusual illumination of sky and earth by the Aurora Borealis. This latter occurred in midwinter. The whole heavens were of a deep rose-color--almost crimson--reddest at the zenith, and paling as it radiated towards the horizon. The snow was fresh on the ground, and that, too, was of a brilliant red. Cold as it was, windows were thrown up all around us for people to look out at the wonderful sight. I was gazing with the rest, and listening to exclamations of wonder from surrounding unseen beholders, when somebody shouted from far down the opposite block of buildings, with startling effect,--

"You can't stand the fire In that great day!"

It was the refrain of a Millerite hymn. The Millerites believed that these signs in the sky were omens of the approaching catastrophe. And it was said that some of them did go so far as to put on white "ascension robes," and assemble somewhere, to wait for the expected hour.

When daguerreotypes were first made, when we heard that the sun was going to take everybody's portrait, it seemed almost too great a marvel to be believed. While it was yet only a rumor that such a thing had been done, somewhere across the sea, I saw some verses about it which impressed me much, but which I only partly remember. These were the opening lines:-- "Oh, what if thus our evil deeds Are mirrored on the sky, And every line of our wild lives Daguerreotyped on high!"