Fifteen Days: An Extract from Edward Colvil's Journal

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Fifteen Days, by Mary Lowell Putnam
EXTRACT FROM EDWARD COLVIL'S JOURNAL.
Aux plus déshérités le plus d'amour.
BOSTON: TICKNOR AND FIELDS. 1866.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by M. Lowell Putnam, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more, Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, And with forced fingers rude Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Good-Friday Evening, April 5, 1844.
No entry in my journal since the twenty-eighth of March. Yet these seven silent days have a richer history than any that have arrived, with their exactions or their gifts, since those liberal ones of two springs ago came to endow me with your friendship.
Easy to tread and pleasant to look back upon is the level plain of our life, uniform, yet diversified, familiar, yet always new; but, from time to time, we find ourselves on little sunny heights from which the way we have traversed shows yet fairer than we knew it, and that which we are to take invites with more cheerful promise.
I did not know last Friday morning that anything was wanting to me. And had I not enough? My farm-duties, which restrict my study-time just enough to leave it always the zest of privilege; my books, possessed or on the way; my mother's dear affection; your faithful letters, true to the hour; Selden's, that come at last;—these, and then the casual claims, the little countless pleasures infinitely varied, special portion of each human day! always something to do, something to enjoy, something to expect. And yet I would not now go back and be where I was last Friday morning. Beautiful miracle! Our cup is always full, yet its capacity is never reached!
Since the day I stood at my gate, listening for the fading sounds of your horse's feet, many guests have crossed my threshold and recrossed it,—all received with good-will, dismissed with good wishes. Last Friday brought one whom I took to my heart and hold there. The first clasp of his firm hand, the first look of his sweet, frank eyes, bound me to him forever. Keith, I have more to love than I had a week ago, and the world is more beautiful for me, life better worth living.