oung man of
merits, various and eminent, in spite of his baseness, to whom, for
nearly two years, this young woman had given her whole confiding love,
might be dismissed from a heart like hers on the earliest summons of
pride, simply because she herself had been dismissed from _his_, or
seemed to have been dismissed, on a summons of mercenary calculation?
Look! now that she is relieved from the weight of an unconfidential
presence, she has sat for two hours with her head buried in her hands.
At last she rises to look for something. A thought has struck her; and,
taking a little golden key which hangs by a chain within her bosom, she
searches for something locked up amongst her few jewels. What is it? It
is a Bible exquisitely illuminated, with a letter attached, by some
pretty silken artifice, to the blank leaves at the end. This letter is a
beautiful record, wisely and pathetically composed, of maternal anxiety
still burning strong in death, and yearning, when all objects beside
were fast fading from _her_ eyes, after one parting act of communion
with the twin darlings of her heart. Both were thirteen years old,
within a week or two, as on the night before her death they sat weeping
by the bedside of their mother, and hanging on her lips, now for
farewell whispers, and now for farewell kisses. They both knew that, as
her strength had permitted during the latter month of her life, she had
thrown the last anguish of love in her beseeching heart into a letter of
counsel to themselves. Through this, of which each sister had a copy,
she trusted long to converse with her orphans. And the last promise
which she had entreated on this evening from both, was--that in either
of two contingencies they would review her counsels, and the passages to
which she pointed their attention in the Scriptures; namely, first, in
the event of any calamity, that, for one sister or for both, should
overspread their paths with total darkness; and secondly, in the event
of life flowing in too profound a stream of prosperity, so as to
threaten them with an alienation of interest from all spiritual objects.
She had not concealed that, of these two extreme cases, she would prefer
for her own children the first. And now had that case arrived indeed,
which she in spirit had desired to meet. Nine years ago, just as the
silvery voice of a dial in the dying lady's bedroom was striking nine
upon a summer evening, had the last visual ray streamed from her see