Dream Life: A Fable of the Seasons

by Donald Grant Mitchell

That cherished Madge, the partner of your life and joy, still lingers, though her step is feeble, and her eyes are dimmed;—not as once attracting you by any outward show of beauty; your heart, glowing through the memory of a life of joy, needs no such stimulant to the affections. Your hearts are knit together by a habit of growth, and a unanimity of desire. There is less to remind of the vanities of earth, and more to quicken the hopes of a time when body yields to spirit.

Your own poor, battered hulk wants no jaunty-trimmed craft for consort; but twin of heart and soul, as you are twin of years, you float tranquilly toward that haven which lies before us all.

Your children, now almost verging on maturity, bless your hearth and home. Not one is gone. Frank indeed—that wild fellow of a youth, who has wrought your heart into perplexing anxieties again and again, as you have seen the wayward dashes of his young blood—is often away. But his heart yet centres where yours centres; and his absence is only a nearer and bolder strife with that fierce world whose circumstances every man of force and energy is born to conquer.

His return from time to time with that proud figure of opening manliness, and that full flush of health, speaks to your affections as you could never have believed it would. It is not for a man, who is the father of a man, to show any weakness of the heart, or any over-sensitiveness, in those ties which bind him to his kin. And yet—yet, as you sit by your fireside, with your clear, gray eye feasting in its feebleness on that proud figure of a man who calls you "father,"—and as you see his fond and loving attentions to that one who has been your partner in all anxieties and joys, there is a throbbing within your bosom that makes you almost wish him young again,—that you might embrace him now, as when he warbled in your rejoicing ear those first words of love!—Ah, how little does a son know the secret and craving tenderness of a parent,—how little conception has he of those silent bursts of fondness and of joy which attend his coming, and which crown his parting!

There is young Madge too,—dark-eyed, tall, with a pensive shadow resting on her face,—the very image of refinement and of delicacy. She is thoughtful;—not breaking out, like the hoiden, flax-haired Nelly, into bursts of joy and singing,—but stealing upon your heart with a gentle and quiet tenderness that diffuses itself throughout the household like a soft zephyr of summer.

There are friends too yet left, who come in upon your evening hours, and light up the loitering time with dreamy story of the years that are gone. How eagerly you listen to some gossiping veteran friend, who with his deft words calls up the thread of some by-gone years of life; and with what a careless, yet grateful recognition you lapse, as it were, into the current of the past, and live over again by your hospitable blaze the stir, the joy, and the pride of your lost manhood.

The children of friends too have grown upon your march, and come to welcome you with that reverent deference which always touches the heart of age. That wild boy Will,—the son of a dear friend,—who but a little while ago was worrying you with his boyish pranks, has now shot up into tall and graceful youth, and evening after evening finds him making part of your little household group.

----Does the fond old man think that he is all the attraction!

It may be that in your dreamy speculations about the future of your children, (for still you dream,) you think that Will may possibly become the husband of the sedate and kindly Madge. It worries you to find Nelly teasing him as she does; that mad hoiden will never be quiet; she provokes you excessively: and yet she is a dear creature; there is no meeting those laughing blue eyes of hers without a smile and an embrace!

It pleases you however to see the winning frankness with which Madge always receives Will. And with a little of your old vanity of observation you trace out the growth of their dawning attachment. It provokes you to find Nelly breaking up their quiet tête-à-têtes with her provoking sallies, and drawing away Will to some saunter in the garden, or to some mad gallop over the hills.