[SIX MILESTONES:]
A CHRISTMAS MEMORY.
[CHAPTER I.]
MANY men and women have days and seasons in their lives which stand out from all the rest, and mark its stages as the milestones bid us mark the distances we travel on the king's highway, and the guide-posts indicate a turn in a fresh direction.
I look back on such days and seasons, and I love to look, even though some of them bring sorrowful pictures before my mind's eye, or tell of actual bereavement—of hushed voices and empty chairs. For, thank God! the memories of mercies and blessings far outnumber those of a sorrowful sort. Indeed, He has shown me the exceeding preciousness of trial as a preparation for the enjoyment of happiness to follow, and which was held back for a little while, until I was fit to be trusted with it.
Thirty years is a large portion of even a long life, but as each Christmas is drawing near, I look back to the same season.
I was a homeless girl, just turned nineteen. I say "homeless," because there was no house in the whole wide world which I had the right to call home, no roof under which I could actually claim a shelter. I had neither father, mother, sister, nor brother, though three years before I had all these. How I lost them, one by one, and was left with no provision or property except two hundred pounds, the bequest of my great-aunt, I will not relate at length.
I had, however, one dowry which was better than houses or land, and was sure to be the best fitted to cheer me in my lonely condition, because it came to me as a direct gift from God. This was a bright and happy disposition, which inclined me to thankfulness rather than repining, and made me ever on the watch for some gleam of light, however dark might be the overhanging cloud.
I was nineteen when I found myself in the position I have described—namely, about to be homeless, and with an income of six pounds sterling per annum arising from the two hundred pounds in the Three per Cents.
I can hardly say, however, that this was my only heritage, for during my father's prosperous days, he had spent money freely enough on my education, and given me a good all-round training, which was likely to prove useful, and of which, I could not be deprived. Then he had left me an honoured name, and though, through unforeseen circumstances, he had no money or lands to leave his child, what he did leave sufficed to pay every claim, so that I could hold up my head and feel that his memory was free from the reproach of insolvency.
It had always been a matter alike of principle and of—shall I say, pride?—with him to owe no man anything. It lightened his last hours to know that no one would lose a penny through the trouble which had deprived him of everything in the shape of worldly goods.