fully as if it were a priceless object? Because in its color (now
faded), in its quaint Indian pattern and tiny bouquets of violets,
I still find an emanation from my mother; I believe that I borrow
therefrom a holy calm and sweet confidence that is almost a faith. And
mingled in with the other feelings there is perhaps a melancholy regret
for those May mornings of long ago that seemed so much brighter than are
those of to-day.

Truly I fear this book, the most personal I have ever written, will
weary many.

In transcribing these memories in the calm of middle life, so favorable
to reverie, I had constantly present in my thought the lovely queen to
whom I would dedicate this book; it is as if I were writing her a long
letter with the full assurance of being understood in all those sacred
matters to which words give but an inadequate expression.

Perhaps you will understand also, my dear unknown readers, who with
kindly sympathy have followed me thus far; and all those who cherish, or
who have been cherished by their mothers will not smile at the childish
things written down here.

But this chapter will certainly seem ridiculous to those who are
strangers to an all absorbing love, they will not be able to imagine
that I have a deep pity to exchange for their cynical smiles.

CHAPTER VI.

Before I finish writing of the confused memories I have of the
commencement of my life I wish to speak of another ray of sunshine--a
sad ray this time,--that has left an ineffaceable impression upon me,
and the meaning of which will never be clear to me.

Upon a Sunday, after we had returned from church, the ray appeared to
me. It came through a half-open window and fell into the stairway, and
as it lengthened itself upon the whiteness of the wall it took on a
peculiar, weird shape.

I had returned from church with my mother and as I mounted the stairs I
took her hand. The house was filled with a humming silence peculiar
to the noontime of very hot summer days (it was August or September).
Following the habit of our country the shutters were half closed making
indoors, during the heated period of the day, a sort of twilight.

As I entered the house there came to me an appreciation of the stillness
of Sunday that in the country and in peaceful byways of little towns
is like the peace of death. But when I saw the ray of sunlight fall
obliquely through the staircase window, I had a feeling more poignant
than ordinary so