“Do tell us about it, Miss Revere. I have always longed to know your history, for I was sure you had one. You seem to be so apart from us girls, and to do every thing as if you had done it before, and as if you stood so far back, that things which make us happy or unhappy are only things to be looked at by you, just like Leonora, who is always quietly sketching us, when the greatest excitement is going on.”
“I will tell you, if you wish, all that is to be told of a life, which, with one exception, has been without events, that would appear such to any one but myself. It will only, therefore, be the result, and not the history of my life, which I can tell you, and that rather for the pleasure I shall have in exacting the same of you, than for any I shall take in recalling my own. I say there has been but one event in my life; it was that which left me an orphan. O girls, we speak of Clara's coming down to the ground; we speak of seeing our way clear, and treading on solid ground; these are expressions of those whose feet only would walk upon the ground, while their hearts and eyes are on a level with those about them, who have never known how hard to the forehead is the ground, when all we love lie beneath it; how one hides her face in terror from the vacant air, finding her only refuge in the earth, where lies all her grief. But I do not wish to bring my dark robe among your gay dresses.”
“O Miss Revere!”
“Tell me if you think it possible for one who is absolutely alone in the world to be happy, after having once been so with others?”
“I cannot imagine being alone, any more than I can imagine a sound, without being there to hear it,” answered Anna.
“Poor Mr. Polanco, in the Darien expedition! Was not that absolute solitude? After being left to die alone by his companions, who were forced by starvation to desert him, think of his bones being found long after, stretched on the grave of his friend, who had been buried a day's march behind!” said Miss Revere.
“I know. Was it not frightful?” said Anna. “Can you imagine a solitude so appalling, that a dying man would drag himself a whole day's march (poor men! it was but a few miles in their condition) to find in a grave some semblance of human society.”
“As if a drowning sailor, in an Arctic sea, should swim to an island of ice,” said Kate.
“Only think how many have gone down in the sea with nothing in sight but the waves; and people have fallen down precipices, and known they were going, and no one has ever known what they have felt. We only hear about those who are saved. I would give any thing to know the last thoughts of those who have never been heard of.”
“But, Anna, is it not the same to every one at the last moment?”