Midnight, – strange mystic hour, – when the veil between the frail present and the eternal future grows thin.
Now, I’ve been laughed at for my notions, sir, and I’ve been talked to.
Nothing is easier than talking,” said St. Clare. “I believe Shakespeare makes somebody say, ‘I could sooner show twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow my own showing.’ Nothing like division of labor. My forte lies in talking, and yours, cousin, lies in doing.
Well, then, I will die!” said Tom. “Spin it out as long as they can, they can’t help my dying, some time! – and, after that, they can’t do no more. I’m clar, I’m set! I know the Lord’ll help me, and bring me through.
Now, John, I don’t know anything about politics, but I can read my Bible; and there I see that I must feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and comfort the desolate; and that Bible I mean to follow.” “But in cases where your doing so would involve a great public evil – ” “Obeying God never brings on public evils. I know it can’t. It’s always safest, all round, to do as He bids us.
I used to think, if there was anything in the world he did love, it was our dear little Eva; but he seems to be forgetting her very easily. I cannot ever get him to talk about her. I really did think he would show more feeling!” “Still waters run deepest, they used to tell me,” said Miss Ophelia, oracularly.
No one is so thoroughly superstitious as the godless man. The Christian is composed by the belief of a wise, all-ruling Father, whose presence fills the void unknown with light and order; but to the man who has dethroned God, the spirit-land is, indeed, in the words of the Hebrew poet, “a land of darkness and the shadow of death,” without any order, where the light is as darkness. Life and death to him are haunted grounds, filled with goblin forms of vague and shadowy dread.
Mamma,” said Eva, “I want to have some of my hair cut off, – a good deal of it.” “What for?” said Marie. “Mamma, I want to give some away to my friends, while I am able to give it to them myself. Won’t you ask aunty to come and cut it for me?” Marie raised her voice, and called Miss Ophelia, from the other room. The child half rose from her pillow as she came in, and, shaking down her long golden-brown curls, said, rather playfully, “Come, aunty, shear the sheep!
Yes, I know you do! There isn’t one of you that hasn’t always been very kind to me; and I want to give you something that, when you look at, you shall always remember me, I’m going to give all of you a curl of my hair; and, when you look at it, think that I loved you and am gone to heaven, and that I want to see you all there.
Ah, good brother! is it fair for you to expect of us services which your own brave, honorable heart would not allow you to render, were you in our place?
Augustine, sometimes I think you are not far from the kingdom,” said Miss Ophelia, laying down her knitting, and looking anxiously at her cousin. “Thank you for your good opinion; but it’s up and down with me, – up to heaven’s gate in theory, down in earth’s dust in practice.
My daughter,′ came naturally from the lips of Rachel Halliday; for hers was just the face and form that made ‘mother’ seem the most natural word in the world.
Or I either,” said St. Clare. “The horrid cruelties and outrages that once and a while find their way into the papers, – such cases as Prue’s, for example, – what do they come from? In many cases, it is a gradual hardening process on both sides, – the owner growing more and more cruel, as the servant more and more callous. Whipping and abuse are like laudanum; you have to double the dose as the sensibilities decline.
He’ll go to torment, and no mistake,” said little Jake.
I hate reasoning, John – especially reasoning on such subjects. There’s a way you political folks have of coming round and round a plain right thing; and you don’t believe it yourselves, when it comes to practice.
Tell ye what, Mas’r George, the Lord gives good many things twice over; but he don’t give ye a mother but once. Ye’ll never see sich another woman, Mas’r George, if ye live to be a hundred years old. So, now, you hold on to her, and grow up, and be a comfort to her, thar’s my own good boy, – you will now, won’t ye?
Mas’r,” said Tom, “I know ye can do dreadful things; but,” – he stretched himself upward and clasped his hands, – “but, after ye’ve killed the body, there an’t no more ye can do. And O, there’s all ETERNITY to come, after that!
That’s you Christians, all over! – you’ll get up a society, and get some poor missionary to spend all his days among just such heathen. But let me see one of you that would take one into your house with you, and take the labor of their conversion on yourselves! No; when it comes to that, they are dirty and disagreeable, and it’s too much care, and so on.
Tom looked up to his master, and answered, “Mas’r, if you was sick, or in trouble, or dying, and I could save ye, I’d give ye my heart’s blood; and, if taking every drop of blood in this poor old body would save your precious soul, I’d give ’em freely, as the Lord gave his for me. O, Mas’r! don’t bring this great sin on your soul! It will hurt you more than ’t will me! Do the worst you can, my troubles’ll be over soon; but, if ye don’t repent, yours won’t never end!
He who glides dreamily down the glassy surface of a mighty river floats securely, making his calculations to row upward. He knows nothing what the force of that seemingly glassy current will be when his one feeble oar is set against the whole volume of its waters.
It is the last triumph of affection and magnanimity, when a loving heart can respect that suffering silence of its beloved, and allow that lonely liberty in which only some natures can find comfort.