It does not seem that the heavenly look which rests upon her face is the consequence of a mother’s love for the fame and fortunes of her child. She is just entertaining the bright idea of the immortality of her son. She is looking deep into his heart through his eyes, and she is thinking how she shall impart that mighty thought to the boy; how she shall make him comprehend her views about the antecedence of his soul, that doctrine upon which must rest all her lessons of life, and all her hopes of good from these lessons.
The mother has caught the idea (whether true or false it matters not) that her infant has some high remembrances of a former existence, and that struck with what he sees in the mirror of life, he is attempting to recall something of that state from which he came to animate the body where youth seems to overshadow the past in his soul and clog its movements toward the communion it once enjoyed. She sees, or thinks she sees, something of this, and she catches the ennobling thought that the antecedent of that soul, its primary and indefeasible right to consideration, demand her utmost care, and that the cultivation of the higher powers of the intellect must be made subservient to this still higher power—the immortal principal—where this union of soul and body shall be made profitable to both. That is the mission of the mother; her reward is not in the wealth, the honor, or the happiness of her child—circumstances, consequent though these be upon her teachings—her great reward, the certain and abiding compensation to the virtuous mother for rearing her son to virtue, is found in that state where virtue has its full appreciation, and affection its perfect work. “The mirror of life” is full of lessons; it reflects truths that need only appropriate display to make them profitable; and happy will it be for all, if, catching some of the foreshadowings of the mirror of life, we adapt our conduct to the events; and though we may not be able to change an order of Providence, we can at least make the effect of that Providence beneficial to ourselves.
G.
“GRAHAM” TO “JEREMY SHORT.”
My Dear Jeremy,—Do you ever think of our boarding-school loves, and wonder where all those bright eyes, which used to blaze as from a battery upon us from that pyramid of laughing faces, rising one above the other to the topmost pane of those ample windows, are weeping or laughing now? Do you promenade on the west side, as of yore, without a sigh, and gaze into those deserted windows, from which smiles and rose-tinted notes were showered down upon us with such munificence, without a thought of the fair hands and glad hearts which then gave a sort of sunlight to our devotion—the Mecca to which we turned in our morning prayers and evening rambles? Is it not a sad thought, that as we journey through life, the very innocency of boyhood, the first fresh feelings of the heart, are things of which it is conventional to be ashamed? As if it were a happiness, which we should call a conquest, to learn the bitter lessons of life, at a sacrifice of all the fond recollections of youth, a triumph to know the secret of deceiving with smiles, and of wringing the hand kindly, of people we despise. Yet must we learn the uses of adversity by time, and feel that the brightest of our days are passed forever; that hope, having cheated us for a thousand times, has become bankrupt in our esteem, while the past, brilliant and certain in joys experienced, recalls with the flitting present, doubts of true happiness for us again. It is a stern lesson—that which experience teaches us as we advance in years, to live a life of distrust and doubt, to believe all goodness assumed, and friendship but a cheat; to think that every man’s hand is either raised against his brother, or is thrust into his pocket, and that there is no such thing as self-sacrifice, except among the Hindoos.
But, Jeremy, not to speak of instances, all of which must be as fresh to your memory as to mine, I come back to the first question—do you ever think of our boarding-school loves? and mingle with the remembrance those unexpressed hopes and fears which flutter in the hearts of all of us. My falcon towered above yours in ambition then; nothing less than a mistress of rhetoric and belles letters tempted the magnificent swoop of my poetry and ambition; yours had a fierce and Byronic generality, which made it dangerous for the whole covey of lesser birds. How many were you in love with, Jeremy? At least, how many were made goddesses by your poetry? “You decline,” under present circumstances matrimonial. Well, a man with a growing family, I suppose, owes something to appearances and to example. I have no such excuse to plead, and can be as open as the day.
I really was in love then, Jeremy. Don’t you think so? But I was as jealous as a Turk—a passion which you, from a lack of concentration, thought very unreasonable. It was, too, considering that it was engendered before I had ever spoken to the lady, and finally exploded very foolishly, and harmlessly, too, I believe, upon the head of an innocent old teacher of Latin Grammar, or something of that sort, old enough to be the lady’s grandfather, who would be looking over her album. I wrote my last piece of poetry after that, which did my business in that quarter, for the lady refused to see me or my poetry any more. The loss, I think, was hers in the long run, though I suffered with a heart-ache and prospective suicide for a month or two. I was very much like the poor man in the story book, however,
“For when I saw my eyes were out,
With all my might and main,