Something whereunto I may bind my heart—
Something to love, to rest upon, to clasp
Affection’s tendrils round!”
She did not laugh, I say, for sorrow was in her heart, the first deep sorrow she had ever known. Hugh was going away—and how much better she liked him than all other boys she had ever known in her life! But the rose-bud was not all the contents of the box; there was beside it a magnificent sheet of blue paper, gilt edged, and “superfine,” and on it Hugh had copied the “Parting Song,” by Mrs. Hemans; and perhaps, good reader, though you be not fresh from Yankee land, you may guess how the child’s heart beat faster than ever it had before, as she read the words—
When will you think of me, dear Grace?
When will you think of me?
When the last red light, the farewell of day,
From the rock and the river is passing away,
When the air with a deep’ning hush is fraught,
And the heart goes burdened with tender thought?