The warmest love that can grow cold;
This is a mother's love." Montgomery.
"A malady
Preys on my heart, that medicine cannot reach,
Invincible and cureless." Maturin.
Wednesday, January 29th.
It has fallen into a custom that the Doctor should pass a part of every morning with the invalid, while Eugene walks with his sisters, as he fondly calls them. Nelly and Frank have been in with their father to be introduced to the Colonel; and received from him some valuable curiosities as presents. The next day he sent Pauline a very valuable token of regard, with a message that he fully appreciated the value of such sisters to a young man destitute of any female relative. It is a little singular that while he converses freely on every other subject, and has drawn from the Doctor much of his own history, yet he has never alluded in the most distant manner to the nature of his own peculiar trials. He is much better in health since the change in his medicine, but Frank told him freely that it was not probable the benefit would be permanent.
The Colonel said he should be sorry to think it otherwise; though he supposed he ought to desire to live for the sake of his boy.
I could hardly have thought it possible that we should in so short a time have become so much interested in persons, of whose existence even we were till now ignorant. Eugene is a very dutiful son, and has evidently been trained with the greatest care by his pious father. He repeats over and over again the names of mother and sisters, as if he revelled in the very idea of having such relatives. He told me that one day he called me by the name of mamma in his father's presence, when a look of agony passed like a shade over his face; but in one moment, with a faint smile, he said, "I thank God, my son, that you have found a mother, even in name."
Wednesday, February 12th.