Sweet is the sunshine lacing with its light,
The parting storm-cloud after day of sadness;
That ere the even darkens into night
O’erflows the world with glory and with gladness;
But sweeter is the flood of pleasantness,
That breaks at noonday through the clouds of morning,
While yet the long glad hours have power to bless,
And the earth brightens ’neath its warm adorning
Of scattered sunbeams. So their fate excels
In blessedness, upon whose noonday story
The heavenly sunshine of God’s favour dwells,
While yet their tongues are strong to speak His glory;
And blessed they, O Lord! who, saved and free,
Stretch out compassionate hands to draw men near to thee!
CHAPTER I.
They thicken on our path,
These silent witness years;
A solemn tenantry, that still land hath
Wherein were spent our bygone smiles and tears;
Graven on their secret tablets silently,
Stand deed, and thought, and word,
Beyond the touch of change or soft decay,
’Stablished perpetually before the Lord!
* * * * *
Season of labour, time of hope and fear,
Kind to our households let thy varyings be;
With thee we give a sigh to the Old year,
And do rejoice us in the New with thee.—Y.S.P.
EN years have passed away, and again it is a fireside scene that we have to depict, and a fireside conversation we have to chronicle. The room we now stand in is large and pleasant, and bright with the radiance of merry faces—faces of every age and size, but all marvellously alike in features, as in happiness, from the grave seniors down to the crowing baby, through all the gradations of stature and sobriety that crowd around that well-spread table. The assembly is too large, and the children too near each other in age to allow you to think them all members of one household; and two fathers half checked, half encouraged the merry crowd, and two mothers took sweet counsel together, praising each other’s little ones, and exchanging domestic experiences with each other. We must try and find in these merry faces the traits of those we have known before. Let us see whom we have before us. A man of goodly presence is the elder; grave, it seems, habitually, but with a smile that is like a sunbeam, and which has an electrical effect in the saddest house it beams in; and many, many houses of sorrow does it see, and many mourners are cheered by the words of hope and comfort that flow from these sympathising lips; for you will see, if you look at his apparel, and mark his manner, that he holds a high vocation, no less than a labourer about that glorious vine which has the Eternal Father for its husbandman; a labourer, one who, like the bee, seeks honey from every flower, and from his pulpit, and standing by beds of suffering, and in the dark, close, and fœtid haunts of sin, seeks to have souls for his hire as the labour of his life and the joy of his existence. No mere Sabbath day worker in his pulpit, but one that never tires, that is always ready, and almost always with his harness on his back; like a good knight of the olden time, prompt to succour the distressed. The lady too, who sits beside him, has about her a gentle dignity that is akin to his; but with her blooming cheek and bright eye we can boast no old acquaintance, though when she lays her white hand on his arm and calls him “Halbert,” we are half ashamed to say so much of Halbert Melville’s wife.
But on the other side of the fire sits a younger lady, with a calm air of matronly self-possession, which almost sets our memory at defiance; it is true that her face looks so youthful in its eloquent expressiveness that, but for that copy of it that shines at her knee, through the fair straggling locks of a little merry girl, you might fancy her still the Mary of ten years ago; but in the silent depths of her dark eyes sits such serene and assured happiness, at once so calm, and deep, and full, as makes one sure this cannot be the disconsolate inhabitant of yon dim chamber, weeping in her sleep in the first agony of womanly woe. Yet so it is, and lightly have these ten swift years—long, oh, how long and dreary to many—flown over her, effacing so entirely everything but the remembrance of those passages in her history from her mind, that when she looks back now upon that troubled time, she half smiles, half blushes for her old self, and reckons of her brief but agonising trial, as sick men recall to their memories the terrible dreams of some delirious fever fit. For Mary Melville has found entire and perfect kindred in the heart of one whom then she little recked of and cared not for, and she wonders now how she, ever the object of Charles Hamilton’s warm and full affection, could have overlooked his nobler qualities, and preferred instead Forsyth’s deceptive and hollow brilliancy, and the glitter of well-displayed accomplishments, which threw the blushing youth into the shade. And the blushing youth of our last chapter blushes no longer when he speaks to Mary, nor has his bashfulness been seen, Halbert says, for nine long years and more; never since one bright autumn evening, when Mary and he surprised Christian in her solitude by the whispered communication of an important agreement come to between them, and which was carried into effect, ratified and sealed, on the following new year’s day, fulfilling, in the most joyous manner, old Ailie’s dream. At this transaction Halbert’s presence was indispensable, albeit he was again, after Christian’s kind persuasions and James’s spirited remonstrances had shamed their father into liberality, finishing the long forsaken studies so disastrously interrupted of old, with a vigour and ardour that was unquenchable. True, he did not come to James’s wedding when it took place; but Christian, and Mary, and Charles Hamilton were each and all immovable in their demands; they could not do without Halbert, and so he was present at the ceremony, exciting Charles’s wrathful contradiction, and Christian and Mary’s curiosity, by hinting merrily of another Mary, whose presence would throw the bride of to-day into the shade, though no one at that blithe bridal looked on Mary Melville with more affectionate admiration than her brother Halbert. And lo! when the time of Halbert’s study and probations was over, and Providence had so ordered that the place of his ministry should be the same as that of his birth, and the dwelling-place still of his nearest and dearest kindred, then came about another bridal, and the name of Mary Melville was resuscitated, though Mrs. Charles Hamilton’s proud husband would never allow that the old bearer of the name was equalled by the new.
But there is no rivalship between the sisters—sisters in affection as much as in name—and the children, whose fair heads have sprung up like flowers beside and about them, are like one family in their cordial intercourse. But where is Christian? Our enquiry is echoed by half-a-dozen merry voices. “Where can Aunt Christian be?” There will be no need to ask the question a moment hence, if indeed we can discern our old friend through the pyramid of children that are clustering about her; the little girl that stood by Mary’s knee has left for Aunt Christian, and now stands on a chair beside her, with her round arms about her neck, and her rosy face beaming on her shoulders; the sturdy boy who leant on Halbert’s chair has left that place of honour for Aunt Christian, and he stands proudly at her right hand as prime minister, helping at the distribution of the great basketful of new year’s dainties—for this is again the first night of another year—which she has brought to gladden these youthful hearts. The whole host of her nephews and nieces, absorbed a moment since in their various amusements, have left them all for Aunt Christian, and are gathered about her, one clinging round her waist and one hanging at either arm, greatly impeding the action of her gift-dispensing hand. Sure enough here is Christian, how blithe! how happy! Time has dealt gently with her, and though he has drawn a thread of silver through the rich dark abundance of her plainly braided hair, there is not one in this room that would not start up in indignant surprise, if you said that Christian was either looking or growing old.