----Then the boy develops astonishingly. What a head,—what a foot,—what a voice! And he is so quiet withal,—never known to cry, except under such provocation as would draw tears from a heart of adamant; in short, for the first six months he is never anything but gentle, patient, earnest, loving, intellectual, and magnanimous. You are half afraid that some of the physicians will be reporting the case, as one of the most remarkable instances of perfect moral and physical development on record.
But the years roll on, in the which your extravagant fancies die into the earnest maturity of a father's love. You struggle gayly with the cares that life brings to your door. You feel the strength of three beings in your single arm; and feel your heart warming toward God and man with the added warmth of two other loving and trustful beings.
How eagerly you watch the first tottering step of that boy; how you riot in the joy and pride that swell in that mother's eyes, as they follow his feeble, staggering motions! Can God bless his creatures more than he has blessed that dear Madge and you? Has Heaven even richer joys than live in that home of yours?
By-and-by he speaks; and minds tie together by language, as the hearts have long tied by looks. He wanders with you feebly, and with slow, wandering paces, upon the verge of the great universe of thought. His little eye sparkles with some vague fancy that comes upon him first by language. Madge teaches him the words of affection and of thankfulness; and she teaches him to lisp infant prayer; and by secret pains (how could she be so secret?) instructs him in some little phrase of endearment that she knows will touch your heart; and then she watches your coming; and the little fellow runs toward you, and warbles out his lesson of love in tones that forbid you any answer,—save only those brimming eyes, turned first on her, and then on him,—and poorly concealed by the quick embrace, and the kisses which you shower in transport! Still slip on the years, like brimming bowls of nectar! Another Madge is sister to Frank; and a little Nelly is younger sister to this other Madge.
----Three of them! a charmed and mystic number, which, if it be broken in these young days,—as, alas, it may be!—will only yield a cherub angel to float over you, and to float over them,—to wean you, and to wean them, from this world, where all joys do perish, to that seraph world where joys do last forever.
VI.
A Dream of Darkness.
Is our life a sun, that it should radiate light and heat forever? Do not the calmest and brightest days of autumn show clouds, that drift their ragged edges over the golden disk, and bear down swift with their weight of vapors, until the sun's whole surface is shrouded; and you can see no shadow of tree or flower upon the land, because of the greater and gulping shadow of the cloud?
Will not life bear me out; will not truth, earnest and stern, around me make good the terrible imagination that now comes swooping, heavily and darkly, upon my brain?