ly reader, count upon the fidelity of an artless and tender
heart or two, and reckon among the blessings which Heaven hath bestowed
on thee the love of faithful women! Purify thine own heart, and try to
make it worthy theirs. On thy knees, on thy knees, give thanks for the
blessing awarded thee! All the prizes of life are nothing compared to
that one. All the rewards of ambition, wealth, pleasure, only vanity and
disappointment--grasped at greedily and fought for fiercely, and, over
and over again, found worthless by the weary winners. But love seems to
survive life, and to reach beyond it. I think we take it with us past
the grave. Do we not still give it to those who have left us? May we not
hope that they feel it for us, and that we shall leave it here in one or
two fond bosoms, when we also are gone?

And whence, or how, or why, pray, this sermon? You see I know more about
this Lambert family than you do to whom I am just presenting them:
as how should you who never heard of them before! You may not like my
friends; very few people do like strangers to whom they are presented
with an outrageous flourish of praises on the part of the introducer.
You say (quite naturally), What? Is this all? Are these the people he
is so fond of? Why, the girl's not a beauty--the mother is good-natured,
and may have been good-looking once, but she has no trace of it
now--and, as for the father, he is quite an ordinary man. Granted but
don't you acknowledge that the sight of an honest man, with an honest,
loving wife by his side, and surrounded by loving and obedient children,
presents something very sweet and affecting to you? If you are made
acquainted with such a person, and see the eager kindness of the fond
faces round about him, and that pleasant confidence and affection
which beams from his own, do you mean to say you are not touched and
gratified? If you happen to stay in such a man's house, and at morning
or evening see him and his children and domestics gathered together in a
certain name, do you not join humbly in the petitions of those servants,
and close them with a reverent Amen? That first night of his stay at
Oakhurst, Harry Warrington, who had had a sleeping potion, and was awake
sometimes rather feverish, thought he heard the Evening Hymn, and that
his dearest brother George was singing it at home, in which delusion the
patient went off again to sleep.

CHAPTER XXII. In Hospital

Sinking into a sweet slumber