Through all, your heart cleaves to that sweet image of the beloved Madge, as light cleaves to day. The weeks leap with a bound; and the months only grow long when you approach that day which is to make her yours. There are no flowers rare enough to make bouquets for her; diamonds are too dim for her to wear; pearls are tame.

——And after marriage the weeks are even shorter than before: you wonder why on earth all the single men in the world do not rush tumultuously to the Altar; you look upon them all as a travelled man will look upon some conceited Dutch boor who has never been beyond the limits of his cabbage-garden. Married men, on the contrary, you regard as fellow-voyagers; and look upon their wives—ugly as they may be—as better than none.

You blush a little at first telling your butcher what "your wife" would like; you bargain with the grocer for sugars and teas, and wonder if he knows that you are a married man. You practise your new way of talk upon your office-boy: you tell him that "your wife" expects you home to dinner; and are astonished that he does not stare to hear you say it!

You wonder if the people in the omnibus know that Madge and you are just married; and if the driver knows that the shilling you hand to him is for "self and wife." You wonder if anybody was ever so happy before, or ever will be so happy again.

You enter your name upon the hotel books as "Clarence —— and Wife"; and come back to look at it, wondering if anybody else has noticed it,—and thinking that it looks remarkably well. You cannot help thinking that every third man you meet in the hall wishes he possessed your wife; nor do you think it very sinful in him to wish it. You fear it is placing temptation in the way of covetous men to put Madge's little gaiters outside the chamber-door at night.

Your home, when it is entered, is just what it should be,—quiet, small,—with everything she wishes, and nothing more than she wishes. The sun strikes it in the happiest possible way; the piano is the sweetest-toned in the world; the library is stocked to a charm;—and Madge, that blessed wife, is there, adorning and giving life to it all. To think even of her possible death is a suffering you class with the infernal tortures of the Inquisition. You grow twin of heart and of purpose. Smiles seem made for marriage; and you wonder how you ever wore them before!

* * * * *

So a year and more wears off of mingled home-life, visiting, and travel. A new hope and joy lightens home: there is a child there.

——What a joy to be a father! What new emotions crowd the eye with tears, and make the hand tremble! What a benevolence radiates from you toward the nurse,—toward the physician,—toward everybody! What a holiness and sanctity of love grows upon your old devotion to that wife of your bosom—the mother of your child!

The excess of joy seems almost to blur the stories of happiness which attach to heaven. You are now joined, as you were never joined before, to the great family of man. Your name and blood will live after you; nor do you once think (what father can?) but that it will live honorably and well.

With what a new air you walk the streets! With what a triumph you speak, in your letter to Nelly, of "your family!" Who, that has not felt it, knows what it is to be "a man of family!"

How weak now seem all the imaginations of your single life; what bare, dry skeletons of the reality they furnished! You pity the poor fellows who have no wives or children—from your soul; you count their smiles as empty smiles, put on to cover the lack that is in them. There is a freemasonry among fathers that they know nothing of. You compassionate them deeply; you think them worthy objects of some charitable association; you would cheerfully buy tracts for them, if they would but read them,—tracts on marriage and children.

——And then "the boy,"—such a boy!

There was a time when you thought all babies very much alike;—alike? Is your boy like anything, except the wonderful fellow that he is? Was there ever a baby seen, or even read of, like that baby!

——Look at him: pick him up in his long, white gown: he may have an excess of color,—but such a pretty color! he is a little pouty about the mouth,—but such a mouth! His hair is a little scant, and he is rather wandering in the eye,—but, Good Heavens, what an eye!

There was a time when you thought it very absurd for fathers to talk about their children; but it does not seem at all absurd now. You think, on the contrary, that your old friends, who used to sup with you at the club, would be delighted to know how your baby is getting on, and how much he measures around the calf of the leg! If they pay you a visit, you are quite sure they are in an agony to see Frank; and you hold the little squirming fellow in your arms, half conscience-smitten for provoking them to such envy as they must be suffering. You make a settlement upon the boy with a chuckle,—as if you were treating yourself to a mint-julep, instead of conveying away a few thousands of seven per cents.

——Then the boy develops astonishingly. What a head,—what a foot,—what a voice! And he is so quiet withal,—never known to cry, except under such provocation as would draw tears from a heart of adamant; in short, for the first six months he is never anything but gentle, patient, earnest, loving, intellectual, and magnanimous. You are half afraid that some of the physicians will be reporting the case, as one of the most remarkable instances of perfect moral and physical development on record.

But the years roll on, in the which your extravagant fancies die into the earnest maturity of a father's love. You struggle gayly with the cares that life brings to your door. You feel the strength of three beings in your single arm; and feel your heart warming toward God and man with the added warmth of two other loving and trustful beings.

How eagerly you watch the first tottering step of that boy; how you riot in the joy and pride that swell in that mother's eyes, as they follow his feeble, staggering motions! Can God bless his creatures more than he has blessed that dear Madge and you? Has Heaven even richer joys than live in that home of yours?

By-and-by he speaks; and minds tie together by language, as the hearts have long tied by looks. He wanders with you feebly, and with slow, wandering paces, upon the verge of the great universe of thought. His little eye sparkles with some vague fancy that comes upon him first by language. Madge teaches him the words of affection and of thankfulness; and she teaches him to lisp infant prayer; and by secret pains (how could she be so secret?) instructs him in some little phrase of endearment that she knows will touch your heart; and then she watches your coming; and the little fellow runs toward you, and warbles out his lesson of love in tones that forbid you any answer,—save only those brimming eyes, turned first on her, and then on him,—and poorly concealed by the quick embrace, and the kisses which you shower in transport! Still slip on the years, like brimming bowls of nectar! Another Madge is sister to Frank; and a little Nelly is younger sister to this other Madge.

——Three of them! a charmed and mystic number, which, if it be broken in these young days,—as, alas, it may be!—will only yield a cherub angel to float over you, and to float over them,—to wean you, and to wean them, from this world, where all joys do perish, to that seraph world where joys do last forever.



VI.

A Dream of Darkness.

Is our life a sun, that it should radiate light and heat forever? Do not the calmest and brightest days of autumn show clouds, that drift their ragged edges over the golden disk, and bear down swift with their weight of vapors, until the sun's whole surface is shrouded; and you can see no shadow of tree or flower upon the land, because of the greater and gulping shadow of the cloud?

Will not life bear me out; will not truth, earnest and stern, around me make good the terrible imagination that now comes swooping, heavily and darkly, upon my brain?

You are living in a little village not far away from the city. It is a graceful and luxurious home that you possess. The holly and the laurel gladden its lawn in winter; and bowers of blossoms sweeten it through all the summer. You know each day of your return from the town, where first you will catch sight of that graceful figure flitting like a shadow of love beneath the trees; you know well where you will meet the joyous and noisy welcome of stout Frank, and of tottling Nelly. Day after day and week after week they fail not.

A friend sometimes attends you; and a friend to you is always a friend to Madge. In the city you fall in once more with your old acquaintance Dalton,—the graceful, winning, yet dissolute man that his youth promised. He wishes to see your cottage home. Your heart half hesitates; yet it seems folly to cherish distrust of a boon companion in so many of your revels.

Madge receives him with that sweet smile which welcomes all your friends. He gains the heart of Frank by talking of his toys and of his pigeons; and he wins upon the tenderness of the mother by his attentions to the child. Even you repent of your passing shadow of dislike, and feel your heart warming toward him as he takes little Nelly in his arms and provokes her joyous prattle.

Madge is unbounded in her admiration of your friend: he renews, at your solicitation, his visit: he proves kinder than ever; and you grow ashamed of your distrust.

Madge is not learned in the arts of a city life; the accomplishments of a man-of-the world are almost new to her; she listens with eagerness to Dalton's graphic stories of foreign fetes and luxury; she is charmed with his clear, bold voice, and with his manly execution of little operatic airs.

——She is beautiful,—that wife who has made your heart whole by its division,—fearfully beautiful! And she is not cold, or impassive: her heart, though fond and earnest, is yet human;—we are all human. The accomplishments and graces of the world must needs take hold upon her fancy. And a fear creeps over you that you dare not whisper,—that those graces may cast into the shade your own yearning and silent tenderness.

But this is a selfish fear, that you think you have no right to cherish. She takes pleasure in the society of Dalton,—what right have you to say her—nay? His character indeed is not altogether such as you could wish; but will it not be selfish to tell her even this? Will it not be even worse, and show taint of a lurking suspicion, which you know would wound her grievously? You struggle with your distrust by meeting him more kindly than ever; yet at times there will steal over you a sadness, which that dear Madge detects, and sorrowing in her turn, tries to draw away from you by the touching kindness of sympathy. Her look and manner kill all your doubt; and you show that it is gone, and piously conceal the cause by welcoming in gayer tones than ever the man who has fostered it by his presence.

Business calls you away to a great distance from home: it is the first long parting of your real manhood. And can suspicion, or a fear, lurk amid those tearful embraces? Not one,—thank God,—not one!

Your letters, frequent and earnest, bespeak your increased devotion; and the embraces you bid her give to the sweet ones of your little flock, tell of the calmness and sufficiency of your love. Her letters too are running over with affection;—what though she mentions the frequent visits of Dalton, and tells stories of his kindness and attachment? You feel safe in her strength; and yet—yet there is a brooding terror, that rises out of your knowledge of Dalton's character.

And can you tell her this; can you stab her fondness, now that you are away, with even a hint of what would crush her delicate nature?

What you know to be love, and what you fancy to be duty, struggle long; but love conquers. And with sweet trust in her, and double trust in God, you await your return. That return will be speedier than you think.

You receive one day a letter: it is addressed in the hand of a friend, who is often at the cottage, but who has rarely written to you. What can have tempted him now? Has any harm come near your home? No wonder your hands tremble at the opening of that sheet; no wonder that your eyes run like lightning over the hurried lines. Yet there is little in them, very little. The hand is stout and fair. It is a calm letter, a friendly letter; but it is short, terribly short. It bids you come home—"at once!"

——And you go. It is a pleasant country you have to travel through; but you see very little of the country. It is a dangerous voyage, perhaps, you have to make; but you think very little of the danger. The creaking of the timbers, and the lashing of the waves, are quieting music compared with the storm of your raging fears. All the while you associate Dalton with the terror that seems to hang over you; and yet, your trust in Madge is true as Heaven!

At length you approach that home: there lies your cottage resting sweetly upon its hill-side; and the autumn winds are soft; and the maple-tops sway gracefully, all clothed in the scarlet of their frost-dress. Once again as the sun sinks behind the mountain with a trail of glory, and the violet haze tints the gray clouds like so many robes of angels, you take heart and courage, and with firm reliance on the Providence that fashions all forms of beauty, whether in heaven or in heart, your fears spread out, and vanish with the waning twilight.

She is not at the cottage-door to meet you; she does not expect you; and yet your bosom heaves, and your breathing is quick. Your friend meets you, and shakes your hand.—"Clarence," he says, with the tenderness of an old friend,—"be a man!"

Alas, you are a man;—with a man's heart, and a man's fear, and a man's agony! Little Frank comes bounding toward you joyously—yet under traces of tears:—"Oh, papa, mother is gone!"

——"Gone!" And you turn to the face of your friend; it is well he is near by, or you would have fallen.

He can tell you very little; he has known the character of Dalton; he has seen with fear his assiduous attentions—tenfold multiplied since your leave. He has trembled for the issue: this very morning he observed a travelling carriage at the door;—they drove away together. You have no strength to question him. You see that he fears the worst: he does not know Madge so well as you.

——And can it be? Are you indeed widowed with that most terrible of widowhoods? Is your wife living, and yet—lost! Talk not to such a man of the woes of sickness, of poverty, of death; he will laugh at your mimicry of grief.

——All is blackness; whichever way you turn, it is the same; there is no light; your eye is put out; your soul is desolate forever! The heart by which you had grown up into the full stature of joy and blessing, is rooted out of you, and thrown like something loathsome, at which the carrion dogs of the world scent and snuffle!

They will point at you, as the man who has lost all that he prized; and she has stolen it, whom he prized more than what was stolen! And he, the accursed miscreant——. But no, it can never be! Madge is as true as Heaven!

Yet she is not there: whence comes the light that is to cheer you?

——Your children?

Ay, your children,—your little Nelly,—your noble Frank,—they are yours,—doubly, trebly, tenfold yours, now that she, their mother, is a mother no more to them forever!

Ay, close your doors; shut out the world; draw close your curtains; fold them to your heart,—your crushed, bleeding, desolate heart! Lay your forehead to the soft cheek of your noble boy;—beware, beware how you dampen that damask cheek with your scalding tears: yet you cannot help it; they fall—great drops—a river of tears, as you gather him convulsively to your bosom!

"Father, why do you cry so?" says Frank, with the tears of dreadful sympathy starting from those eyes of childhood.

——"Why, papa?"—mimes little Nelly.

——Answer them, if you dare! Try it;—what words—blundering, weak words—choked with agony—leading nowhere—ending in new and convulsive clasps of your weeping, motherless children!

Had she gone to her grave, there would have been a holy joy, a great and swelling grief indeed,—but your poor heart would have found a rest in the quiet churchyard; and your feelings, rooted in that cherished grave, would have stretched up toward Heaven their delicate leaves, and caught the dews of His grace, who watcheth the lilies. But now,—with your heart cast underfoot, or buffeted on the lips of a lying world,—finding no shelter and no abiding place!—alas, we do guess at infinitude only by suffering!

——Madge, Madge! can this be so? Are you not still the same sweet, guileless child of Heaven?



VII.

Peace.

It is a dream,—fearful, to be sure, but only a dream! Madge is true. That soul is honest; it could not be otherwise. God never made it to be false; He never made the sun for darkness.

And before the evening has waned to midnight, sweet day has broken on your gloom;—Madge is folded to your bosom, sobbing fearfully,—not for guilt, or any shadow of guilt, but for the agony she reads upon your brow, and in your low sighs.

The mystery is all cleared by a few lightning words from her indignant lips, and her whole figure trembles, as she shrinks within your embrace, with the thought of that great evil that seemed to shadow you. The villain has sought by every art to beguile her into appearances which should compromise her character and so wound her delicacy as to take away the courage for return; he has even wrought upon her affection for you as his master-weapon: a skilfully contrived story of some accident that had befallen you, had wrought upon her—to the sudden and silent leave of home. But he has failed. At the first suspicion of his falsity, her dignity and virtue shivered all his malice. She shudders at the bare thought of that fiendish scheme which has so lately broken on her view.

"Oh, Clarence, Clarence, could you for one moment believe this of me?"

"Dear Madge, forgive me if a dreamy horror did for an instant palsy my better thought;—it is gone utterly; it will never, never come again!"

And there she leans with her head pillowed on your shoulder, the same sweet angel that has led you in the way of light, and who is still your blessing and your pride.

He—and you forbear to name his name—is gone,—flying vainly from the consciousness of guilt with the curse of Cain upon him,—hastening toward the day when Satan shall clutch his own!

A heavenly peace descends upon you that night,—all the more sacred and calm for the fearful agony that has gone before. A Heaven, that seemed lost, is yours. A love, that you had almost doubted, is beyond all suspicion. A heart, that in the madness of your frenzy you had dared to question, you worship now, with blushes of shame. You thank God for this great goodness, as you never thanked him for any earthly blessing before; and with this twin gratitude lying on your hearts, and clearing your face to smiles, you live on together the old life of joy and of affection.

* * * * *

Again with brimming nectar the years fill up their vases. Your children grow into the same earnest joyousness, and with the same home faith, which lightened upon your young dreams, and toward which you seem to go back, as you riot with them in their Christmas joys, or upon the velvety lawn of June.

Anxieties indeed overtake you, but they are those anxieties which only the selfish would avoid,—anxieties that better the heart with a great weight of tenderness. It may be that your mischievous Frank runs wild with the swift blood of boyhood, and that the hours are long which wait his coming. It may be that your heart echoes in silence the mother's sobs, as she watches his fits of waywardness, and showers upon his very neglect excess of love.

Danger perhaps creeps upon little, joyous Nelly, which makes you tremble for her life; the mother's tears are checked that she may not deepen your grief; and her care guards the little sufferer like a Providence. The nights hang long and heavy; dull, stifled breathing wakes the chamber with ominous sound; the mother's eye scarce closes, but rests with fond sadness upon the little struggling victim of sickness; her hand rests like an angel touch upon the brow, all beaded with the heats of fever; the straggling, gray light of morning breaks through the crevices of the closed blinds,—bringing stir and bustle to the world, but in your home—lighting only the darkness.

Hope, sinking in the mother's heart, takes hold on Faith in God; and her prayer, and her placid look of submission,—more than all your philosophy,—add strength to your faltering courage.

But little Nelly brightens; her faded features take on bloom again; she knows you; she presses your hand; she draws down your cheek to her parched lip; she kisses you, and smiles. The mother's brow loses its shadow; day dawns within as well as without, and on bended knees God is thanked!

Perhaps poverty faces you;—your darling schemes break down. One by one, with failing heart, you strip the luxuries from life. But the sorrow which oppresses you is not the selfish sorrow which the lone man feels: it is far nobler; its chiefest mourning is over the despoiled home. Frank must give up his promised travel; Madge must lose her favorite pony; Nelly must be denied her little fete upon the lawn. The home itself, endeared by so many scenes of happiness and by so many of suffering, must be given up. It is hard, very hard, to tear away your wife from the flowers, the birds, the luxuries, that she has made so dear.

Now she is far stronger than you. She contrives new joys; she wears a holy calm; she cheers by a new hopefulness; she buries even the memory of luxury in the riches of the humble home that her wealth of heart endows. Her soul, catching radiance from that heavenly world where her hope lives, kindles amid the growing shadows, and sheds balm upon the little griefs,—like the serene moon, slanting the dead sun's life, upon the night!

Courage wakes in the presence of those dependent on your toil. Love arms your hand and quickens your brain. Resolutions break large from the swelling soul. Energy leaps into your action like light. Gradually you bring back into your humble home a few traces of the luxury that once adorned it. That wife, whom it is your greatest pleasure to win to smiles, wears a half-sad look as she meets these proofs of love; she fears that you are perilling too much for her pleasure.

——For the first time in life you deceive her. You have won wealth again; you now step firmly upon your new-gained sandals of gold. But you conceal it from her. You contrive a little scheme of surprise, with Frank alone in the secret.

You purchase again the old home; you stock it, as far as may be, with the old luxuries; a new harp is in the place of that one which beguiled so many hours of joy; new and cherished flowers bloom again upon the windows; her birds hang, and warble their melody where they warbled it before. A pony—like as possible to the old—is there for Madge; a fete is secretly contrived upon the lawn. You even place the old, familiar books upon the parlor-table.

The birthday of your own Madge is approaching,—a fete you never pass by without home rejoicings. You drive over with her upon that morning for another look at the old place; a cloud touches her brow,—but she yields to your wish. An old servant—whom you had known in better days—throws open the gates.

——"It is too, too sad," says Madge. "Let us go back, Clarence, to our own home;—we are happy there."

——"A little farther, Madge."

The wife steps slowly over what seems the sepulchre of so many pleasures; the children gambol as of old, and pick flowers. But the mother checks them.

"They are not ours now, my children!"

You stroll to the very door; the goldfinches are hanging upon the wall; the mignonette is in the window. You feel the hand of Madge trembling upon your arm; she is struggling with her weakness.

A tidy waiting-woman shows you into the old parlor:—there is a harp; and there, too, such books as we loved to read.

Madge is overcome; now she entreats:—"Let us go away, Clarence!" and she hides her face.

——"Never, dear Madge, never! it is yours—all yours!"

She looks up in your face; she sees your look of triumph; she catches sight of Frank bursting in at the old hall-door all radiant with joy.

——"Frank!—Clarence!"—the tears forbid any more.

"God bless you, Madge! God bless you!"

* * * * *

And thus in peace and in joy MANHOOD passes on into the third season of our life—even as golden AUTUMN sinks slowly into the tomb of WINTER.



WINTER;

OR,

THE DREAMS OF AGE



DREAMS OF AGE.

Winter.

Slowly, thickly, fastly, fall the snow-flakes,—like the seasons upon the life of man. At the first they lose themselves in the brown mat of herbage, or gently melt, as they fall upon the broad stepping-stone at the door. But as hour after hour passes, the feathery flakes stretch their white cloak plainly on the meadow, and chilling the doorstep with their multitude, cover it with a mat of pearl.

The dried grass-tips pierce the mantle of white, like so many serried spears; but as the storm goes softly on, they sink one by one to their snowy tomb, and presently show nothing of all their army, save one or two straggling banners of blackened and shrunken daisies.

Across the wide meadow that stretches from my window, I can see nothing of those hills which were so green in summer; between me and them lie only the soft, slow-moving masses, filling the air with whiteness I catch only a glimpse of one gaunt and bare-armed oak, looming through the feathery multitude like a tall ship's spars breaking through fog.

The roof of the barn is covered; and the leaking eaves show dark stains of water that trickle down the weather-beaten boards. The pear-trees, that wore such weight of greenness in the leafy June, now stretch their bare arms to the snowy blast, and carry upon each tiny bough a narrow burden of winter.

The old house-dog marches stately through the strange covering of earth, and seems to ponder on the welcome he will show,—and shakes the flakes from his long ears, and with a vain snap at a floating feather he stalks again to his dry covert in the shed. The lambs that belonged to the meadow flock, with their feeding-ground all covered, seem to wonder at their losses; but take courage from the quiet air of the veteran sheep, and gambol after them, as they move sedately toward the shelter of the barn.

The cat, driven from the kitchen-door, beats a coy retreat, with long reaches of her foot, upon the yielding surface. The matronly hens saunter out at a little lifting of the storm, and eye curiously, with heads half turned, their sinking steps, and then fall back, with a quiet cluck of satisfaction, to the wholesome gravel by the stable-door.

By-and-by the snow-flakes pile more leisurely: they grow large and scattered, and come more slowly than before. The hills, that were brown, heave into sight—great, rounded billows of white. The gray woods look shrunken to half their height, and stand waving in the storm. The wind freshens, and scatters the light flakes that crown the burden of the snow; and as the day droops, a clear, bright sky of steel color cleaves the land and clouds, and sends down a chilling wind to bank the walls and to freeze the storm. The moon rises full and round, and plays with a joyous chill over the glistening raiment of the land.

I pile my fire with the clean-cleft hickory; and musing over some sweet story of the olden time, I wander into a rich realm of thought, until my eyes grow dim, and dreaming of battle and of prince, I fall to sleep in my old farm-chamber.

At morning I find my dreams all written on the window in crystals of fairy shape. The cattle, one by one, with ears frost-tipped, and with frosted noses, wend their way to the watering-place in the meadow. One by one they drink, and crop at the stunted herbage which the warm spring keeps green and bare.

A hound bays in the distance; the smoke of cottages rises straight toward heaven; a lazy jingle of sleigh-bells wakens the quiet of the high-road; and upon the hills the leafless woods stand low, like crouching armies, with guns and spears in rest; and among them the scattered spiral pines rise like bannermen, uttering with their thousand tongues of green the proud war-cry—"God is with us!"

But the sky of winter is as capricious as the sky of spring, even as the old wander in thought, like the vagaries of a boy.

Before noon the heavens are mantled with a leaden gray; the eaves, that leaked in the glow of the sun, now tell their tale of morning's warmth in crystal ranks of icicles. The cattle seek their shelter; the few lingering leaves of the white-oaks rustle dismally; the pines breathe sighs of mourning. As the night darkens, and deepens the storm, the house-dog bays; the children crouch in the wide chimney-corners; the sleety rain comes in sharp gusts. And as I sit by the light leaping blaze in my chamber, the scattered hail-drops beat upon my window, like the tappings of an OLD MAN'S cane.



I.

What is Gone.

Gone! Did it ever strike you, my reader, how much meaning lies in that little monosyllable—gone?

Say it to yourself at nightfall, when the sun has sunk under the hills, and the crickets chirp,—"gone." Say it to yourself when the night is far over, and you wake with some sudden start from pleasant dreams,—"gone." Say it to yourself in some country churchyard, where your father, or your mother, sleeps under the blooming violets of spring,—"gone." Say it in your sobbing prayer to Heaven, as you cling lovingly, but oh, how vainly, to the hand of your sweet wife,—"gone!"

Ay, is there not meaning in it? And now, what is gone,—or rather what is not gone? Childhood is gone, with all its blushes and fairness,—with all its health and wantoning,—with all its smiles like glimpses of heaven, and all its tears which were but the suffusion of joy.

Youth is gone,—bright, hopeful youth, when you counted the years with jewelled numbers, and hung lamps of ambition on your path, which lighted the palace of renown; when the days were woven into weeks of blithe labor, and the weeks were rolled into harvest months of triumph, and the months were bound into golden sheaves of years,—all gone!

The strength and pride of manhood is gone; your heart and soul have stamped their deepest dye; the time of power is past; your manliness has told its tale henceforth your career is down;—hitherto you have journeyed up. You look back upon a decade as you once looked upon a half score of months; a year has become to your slackened memory, and to your dull perceptions, like a week of childhood. Suddenly and swiftly come past you great whirls of gone-by thought, and wrecks of vain labor, eddying upon the stream that rushes to the grave. The sweeping outlines of life, that lay once before the vision,—rolling into wide billows of years, like easy lifts of a broad mountain-range,—now seem close-packed together as with a Titan hand, and you see only crowded, craggy heights,—like Alpine fastnesses,—parted with glaciers of grief, and leaking abundant tears!

Your friends are gone; they who counselled and advised you, and who protected your weakness, will guard it no more forever. One by one they have dropped away as you have journeyed on; and yet your journey does not seem a long one. Life at the longest is but a bubble that bursts so soon as it is rounded.

Nelly—your sweet sister, to whom your heart clung so fondly in the young days, and to whom it has clung ever since in the strongest bonds of companionship—is gone—with the rest!

Your thought—wayward now, and flickering—runs over the old days with quick and fevered step; it brings back, faintly as it may, the noisy joys, and the safety, that belonged to the old garret-roof; it figures again the image of that calm-faced father,—long since sleeping beside your mother; it rests like a shadow upon the night when Charlie died; it grasps the old figures of the schoolroom, and kindles again (how strange is memory) the fire that shed its lustre upon the curtains, and the ceiling, as you lay groaning with your first hours of sickness.

Your flitting recollection brings back with gushes of exultation the figure of that little, blue-eyed hoiden,—Madge,—as she came with her work to pass the long evenings with Nelly; it calls again the shy glances that you cast upon her, and your naive ignorance of all the little counter-play that might well have passed between Frank and Nelly. Your mother's form too, clear and distinct, comes upon the wave of your rocking thought; her smile touches you now in age as it never touched you in boyhood.

The image of that fair Miss Dalton, who led your fancy into such mad captivity, glides across your vision like the fragment of a crazy dream long gone by. The country home, where lived the grandfather of Frank, gleams kindly in the sunlight of your memory; and still,—poor, blind Fanny—long since gathered to that rest where her closed eyes will open upon visions of joy—draws forth a sigh of pity.

Then comes up that sweetest and brightest vision of love, and the doubt and care which ran before it,—when your hope groped eagerly through your pride and worldliness toward the sainted purity of her whom you know to be—all too good,—when you trembled at the thought of your own vices and blackness in the presence of her who seemed virtue's self. And even now your old heart bounds with joy as you recall the first timid assurance that you were blessed in the possession of her love, and that you might live in her smiles.

Your thought runs like floating melody over the calm joy that followed you through so many years,—to the prattling children, who were there to bless your path. How poor seem now your transports, as you met their childish embraces, and mingled in their childish employ; how utterly weak the actual, when compared with that glow of affection which memory lends to the scene!

Yet all this is gone; and the anxieties are gone, which knit your heart so strongly to those children, and to her—the mother,—anxieties which distressed you,—which you would eagerly have shunned, yet whose memory you would not now bargain away for a king's ransom! What were the sunlight worth, if clouds did not sometimes hide its brightness; what were the spring, or the summer, if the lessons of the chilling winter did not teach us the story of their warmth?

The days are gone too, in which you may have lingered under the sweet suns of Italy,—with the cherished one beside you, and the eager children, learning new prattle in the soft language of those Eastern lands. The evenings are gone, in which you loitered under the trees with those dear ones under the light of a harvest-moon, and talked of your blooming hopes, and of the stirring plans of your manhood. There are no more ambitious hopes, no more sturdy plans! Life's work has rounded into the evening that shortens labor.

And as you loiter in dreams over the wide waste of what is gone,—a mingled array of griefs and of joys, of failures and of triumphs,—you bless God that there has been so much of joy belonging to your shattered life; and you pray God, with the vain fondness that belongs to a parent's heart, that more of joy, and less of toil, may come near to the cherished ones who bear up your hope and name.

And with your silent prayer come back the old teachings, and vagaries of the boyish heart in its reaches toward Heaven. You recall the old church-reckoning of your goodness: is there much more of it now than then? Is not Heaven just as high, and the world as sadly broad?

Alas, for the poor tale of goodness which age brings to the memory! There may be crowning acts of benevolence, shining here and there; but the margin of what has not been done is very broad. How weak and insignificant seems the story of life's goodness and profit, when Death begins to slant his shadow upon our souls! How infinite in the comparison seems that Eternal goodness which is crowned with mercy. How self vanishes, like a blasted thing, and only lives—if it lives at all—in the glow of that redeeming light which radiates from the CROSS and the THRONE!



II.

What is Left.

But much as there is gone of life, and of its joys, very much remains,—very much in earnest, and very much more in hope. Still you see visions, and you dream dreams, of the times that are to come.

Your home and heart are left; within that home, the old Bible holds its wonted place, which was the monitor of your boyhood; and now, more than ever, it prompts those reverent reaches of the spirit, which go beyond even the track of dreams.

That cherished Madge, the partner of your life and joy, still lingers, though her step is feeble, and her eyes are dimmed;—not as once attracting you by any outward show of beauty; your heart, glowing through the memory of a life of joy, needs no such stimulant to the affections. Your hearts are knit together by a habit of growth, and a unanimity of desire. There is less to remind of the vanities of earth, and more to quicken the hopes of a time when body yields to spirit.

Your own poor, battered hulk wants no jaunty-trimmed craft for consort; but twin of heart and soul, as you are twin of years, you float tranquilly toward that haven which lies before us all.

Your children, now almost verging on maturity, bless your hearth and home. Not one is gone. Frank indeed—that wild fellow of a youth, who has wrought your heart into perplexing anxieties again and again, as you have seen the wayward dashes of his young blood—is often away. But his heart yet centres where yours centres; and his absence is only a nearer and bolder strife with that fierce world whose circumstances every man of force and energy is born to conquer.

His return from time to time with that proud figure of opening manliness, and that full flush of health, speaks to your affections as you could never have believed it would. It is not for a man, who is the father of a man, to show any weakness of the heart, or any over-sensitiveness, in those ties which bind him to his kin. And yet—yet, as you sit by your fireside, with your clear, gray eye feasting in its feebleness on that proud figure of a man who calls you "father,"—and as you see his fond and loving attentions to that one who has been your partner in all anxieties and joys, there is a throbbing within your bosom that makes you almost wish him young again,—that you might embrace him now, as when he warbled in your rejoicing ear those first words of love!—Ah, how little does a son know the secret and craving tenderness of a parent,—how little conception has he of those silent bursts of fondness and of joy which attend his coming, and which crown his parting!

There is young Madge too,—dark-eyed, tall, with a pensive shadow resting on her face,—the very image of refinement and of delicacy. She is thoughtful;—not breaking out, like the hoiden, flax-haired Nelly, into bursts of joy and singing,—but stealing upon your heart with a gentle and quiet tenderness that diffuses itself throughout the household like a soft zephyr of summer.

There are friends too yet left, who come in upon your evening hours, and light up the loitering time with dreamy story of the years that are gone. How eagerly you listen to some gossiping veteran friend, who with his deft words calls up the thread of some by-gone years of life; and with what a careless, yet grateful recognition you lapse, as it were, into the current of the past, and live over again by your hospitable blaze the stir, the joy, and the pride of your lost manhood.

The children of friends too have grown upon your march, and come to welcome you with that reverent deference which always touches the heart of age. That wild boy Will,—the son of a dear friend,—who but a little while ago was worrying you with his boyish pranks, has now shot up into tall and graceful youth, and evening after evening finds him making part of your little household group.

——Does the fond old man think that he is all the attraction!

It may be that in your dreamy speculations about the future of your children, (for still you dream,) you think that Will may possibly become the husband of the sedate and kindly Madge. It worries you to find Nelly teasing him as she does; that mad hoiden will never be quiet; she provokes you excessively: and yet she is a dear creature; there is no meeting those laughing blue eyes of hers without a smile and an embrace!

It pleases you however to see the winning frankness with which Madge always receives Will. And with a little of your old vanity of observation you trace out the growth of their dawning attachment. It provokes you to find Nelly breaking up their quiet tete-a-tetes with her provoking sallies, and drawing away Will to some saunter in the garden, or to some mad gallop over the hills.

At length upon a certain summer's day Will asks to see you. He approaches with a doubtful and disturbed look; you fear that wild Nell has been teasing him with her pranks. Yet he wears not so much an offended look as one of fear. You wonder if it ever happened to you to carry your hat in just that timid manner, and to wear such a shifting expression of the eye, as poor Will wears just now? You wonder if it ever happened to you to begin to talk with an old friend of your father's in just that abashed way? Will must have fallen into some sad scrape.—Well, he is a good fellow, and you will help him out of it!

You look up as he goes on with his story;—you grow perplexed yourself;—you scarce believe your own ears.

——"Nelly?"—Is Will talking of Nelly?

"Yes, sir,—Nelly."

——"What!—and you have told all this to Nelly—that you love her?"

"I have, sir."

"And she says"—

"That I must speak with you, sir."

"Bless my soul!—But she's a good girl;"—and the old man wipes his eyes.

——"Nell!—are you there?"

And she comes,—blushing, lingering, yet smiling through it all.

——"And you could deceive your old father, Nell"—(very fondly.)

Nelly only clasps your hand in both of hers.

"And so you loved Will all the while?"

——Nelly only stoops to drop a little kiss of pleading on your forehead.

——"Well, Nelly," (it is hard to speak roundly,) "give me your hand;—here, Will,—take it:—she's a wild girl;—be kind to her, Will."

"God bless you, sir!"

And Nelly throws herself, sobbing, upon your bosom.

——"Not here,—not here now, Nell!—Will is yonder!"

——Sobbing, sobbing still! Nelly, Nelly,—who would have thought that your merry face covered such a heart of tenderness!



III.

Grief and Joy of Age.

The Winter has its piercing storms,—even as Autumn hath. Hoary age, crowned with honor and with years, bears no immunity from suffering. It is the common heritage of us all: if it come not in the spring or in the summer of our day, it will surely find us in the autumn, or amid the frosts of winter. It is the penalty humanity pays for pleasure; human joys will have their balance. Nature never makes false weight. The east wind is followed by a wind from the west; and every smile will have its equivalent in a tear!

You have lived long and joyously with that dear one who has made your life a holy pilgrimage. She has seemed to lead you into ways of pleasantness, and has kindled in you—as the damps of the world came near to extinguish them—those hopes and aspirations which rest not in life, but soar to the realm of spirits.

You have sometimes shuddered with the thought of parting; you have trembled even at the leave-taking of a year, or of months, and have suffered bitterly as some danger threatened a parting forever. That danger threatens now. Nor is it a sudden fear to startle you into a paroxysm of dread: nothing of this. Nature is kinder,—or she is less kind.

It is a slow and certain approach of danger which you read in the feeble step,—in the wan eye, lighting up from time to time into a brightness, that seems no longer of this world. You read it in the new and ceaseless attentions of the fond child, who yet blesses your home, and who conceals from you the bitterness of the coming grief.

Frank is away—over-seas; and as the mother mentions that name with a tremor of love and of regret, that he is not now with you all,—you recall that other death, when you too were not there. Then, you knew little of a parent's feeling; now, its intensity is present!

Day after day, as summer passes, she is ripening for that world where her faith and her hope have so long lived. Her pressure of your hand at some casual parting for a day is full of a gentle warning, as if she said,—prepare for a longer adieu!

Her language, too, without direct mention steeps your thought in the bitter certainty that she foresees her approaching doom, and that she dreads it only so far as she dreads the grief that will be left in her broken home. Madge—the daughter—glides through the duties of that household like an angel of mercy: she lingers at the sick-bed,—blessing, and taking blessings.

* * * * *

The sun shines warmly without, and through the open casement beats warmly upon the floor within. The birds sing in the joyousness of full-robed summer; the drowsy hum of the bees, stealing sweets from the honeysuckle that bowers the window, lulls the air to a gentle quiet. Her breathing scarce breaks the summer stillness. Yet, she knows it is nearly over. Madge, too,—with features saddened, yet struggling against grief,—feels—that it is nearly over.

It is very hard to think it; how much harder to know it! But there is no mistaking her look now—so placid, so gentle, so resigned! And her grasp of your hand—so warm—so full of meaning!

——"Madge, Madge, must it be?" And a pleasant smile lights her eye; and her grasp is warmer; and her look is—upward!

——"Must it—must it be, dear Madge?"—A holier smile,—loftier,—lit up of angels, beams on her faded features. The hand relaxes its clasp, and you cling to it faster—harder,—joined close to the frail wreck of your love,—joined tightly—but oh, how far apart!

She is in Heaven;—and you, struggling against the grief of a lorn, old man!

But sorrow, however great it be, must be subdued in the presence of a child. Its fevered outbursts must be kept for those silent hours when no young eyes are watching, and no young hearts will "catch the trick of grief."

When the household is quiet and darkened,—when Madge is away from you, and your boy Frank slumbering—as youth slumbers upon sorrow,—when you are alone with God and the night,—in that room so long hallowed by her presence, but now—deserted—silent,—then you may yield yourself to such frenzy of tears as your strength will let you! And in your solitary rambles through the churchyard you can loiter of a summer's noon over her fresh-made grave, and let your pent heart speak, and your spirit lean toward the Rest where her love has led you!

Thornton, the clergyman, whose prayer over the dead has dwelt with you, comes from time to time to light up your solitary hearth with his talk of the Rest for all men. He is young, but his earnest and gentle speech win their way to your heart, and to your understanding. You love his counsels; you make of him a friend, whose visits are long and often repeated.

Frank only lingers for a while; and you bid him again—adieu. It seems to you that it may well be the last; and your blessing trembles on your lip. Yet you look not with dread, but rather with a firm trustfulness toward the day of the end. For your darling Madge, it is true, you have anxieties; you fear to leave her lonely in the world with no protector save the wayward Frank.

* * * * *

It is later August when you call to Madge one day to bring you the little escritoire, in which are your cherished papers; among them is your last will and testament. Thornton has just left you, and it seems to you that his repeated kindnesses are deserving of some substantial mark of your regard.

"Maggie," you say, "Mr. Thornton has been very kind to me."

"Very kind, father."

"I mean to leave him here some little legacy, Maggie."

"I would not, father."

"But Madge, my daughter!"

"He is not looking for such return, father."

"But he has been very kind, Madge; I must show him some strong token of my regard. What shall it be, Maggie?"

Madge hesitates,—Madge blushes,—Madge stoops to her father's ear as if the very walls might catch the secret of her heart;—"Would you give me to him, father?"

"But—my dear Madge—has he asked this?"

"Eight months ago, papa."

"And you told him"—

"That I would never leave you, so long as you lived!"

——"My own dear Madge,—come to me,—kiss me! And you love him, Maggie?"

"With all my heart, sir."

——"So like your mother,—the same figure,—the same true, honest heart! It shall be as you wish, dear Madge. Only you will not leave me in my old age,—eh, Maggie?"

——"Never, father,—never."

* * * * *

——And there she leans upon his chair;—her arm around the old man's neck,—her other hand clasped in his,—and her eyes melting with tenderness as she gazes upon his aged face,—all radiant with joy and with hope!



IV.

The End of Dreams.

A feeble old man, and a young lady who is just now blooming into the maturity of womanhood, are toiling up a gentle slope, where the spring sun lies warmly. The old man totters, though he leans heavily upon his cane; and he pants as he seats himself upon a mossy rock that crowns the summit of the slope. As he recovers breath, he draws the hand of the lady in his, and with a trembling eagerness he points out an old mansion that lies below under the shadow of tall sycamores; and he says,—feebly and brokenly,—"That is it, Maggie,—the old home—the sycamores—the garret—Charlie—Nelly"—

The old man wipes his eyes. Then his hand shifts: he seems groping in darkness; but soon it rests upon a little cottage below, heavily overshadowed.

"That was it, Maggie;—Madge lived there—sweet Madge—your mother"—

Again the old man wipes his eyes, and the lady turns away.

Presently they walk down the hill together. They cross a little valley with slow, faltering steps. The lady guides him carefully, until they reach a little graveyard.

"This must be it, Maggie, but the fence is new. There it is, Maggie, under the willow,—my poor mother's grave!"

The lady weeps.

"Thank you, Madge; you did not know her, but you weep for me. God bless you!"

* * * * *

The old man is in the midst of his household. It is some festive day. He holds feebly his place at the head of the board. He utters in feeble tones—a Thanksgiving.

His married Nelly is there with two blooming children. Frank is there with his bride. Madge—dearest of all—is seated beside the old man, watchful of his comfort, and assisting him as with a shadowy dignity he essays to do the honors of the board. The children prattle merrily: the elder ones talk of the days gone by; and the old man enters feebly, yet with floating glimpses of glee, into the cheer and the rejoicings.

——Poor old man, he is near his tomb! Yet his calm eye, looking upward, seems to show no fear.

* * * * *

The same old man is in his chamber; he cannot leave his chair now. Madge is beside him; Nelly is there too with her eldest-born. Madge has been reading to the old man: it was a passage of promise—of the Bible promise.

"A glorious promise!" says the old man, feebly;—"a promise to me,—a promise to her, poor Madge!"

——"Is her picture there, Maggie?"

Madge brings it to him: he turns his head; but the light is not strong. They wheel his chair to the window. The sun is shining brightly: still the old man cannot see.

"It is getting dark, Maggie."

Madge looks at Nelly—wistfully—sadly.

The old man murmurs something; and Madge stoops.—"Coming," he says,—"coming!"

Nelly brings the little child to take his hand. Perhaps it will revive him. She lifts her boy to kiss his cheek.

The old man does not stir: his eyes do not move: they seem fixed above. The child cries as his lips touch the cold cheek.—It is a tender Spring flower upon the bosom of the dying WINTER!

* * * * *

——The old man is gone: his dream-life is ended.



THE END.