“Your own, Dick—how so?”
“Why, don’t we do as much as the old man; and if right’s right, is it not as much ours as his?”
“Oh no, Dick—not as long as we gain it for him and not for ourselves.”
“But what have you done, Arthur? Why you only saw me go to the money-drawer, and said you knew nothing about it. That’s no deception, Arthur.”
“But it is, Dick.”
“Well, if that will satisfy you, I will promise not to be guilty of the like again.”
“But will you likewise promise not to go into that company again? I went with you, because I was so unhappy at home. And you were the son of one who had been kind to me, and I loved you for it; and after Amy died, I no longer felt a motive for wishing to become a great or a good man; but I feel to-night as if I should have been happier if I had never gone with you.”
Dick was asleep. He knew that Arthur would not expose him. His parent’s kindness sunk so deeply into his grateful heart, that it seemed to give their son a talismanic power over the unhappy boy, to govern him at will.
Again ’twas evening, and the little flower-spirit, cradled in the pearly folds of a pure snow-drop, looked from its lovely bed. There sat Arthur. Beside him glimmered the midnight lamp; his dark, full eyes were fixed intently upon the pages of a book, on which, spread by the ministers of earth, shone a glittering banquet. The name of Love was there—aye, and the counterfeit of its bright plumage, too, which threw a hue of beauty o’er the scene. This, the master of the feast, (to fix its spell on the unwary reader,) had deified as the radiant vision sent from high Heaven. And the bright beings of his soul caught greedily the tempting viands, as the food for which they sighed. But, as the poison mingled through their veins, their pinions flagged—the Passions threw their hateful coils around, binding them closer, tighter still to earth. And yet, upon that title-page there shone the name of one called great on earth.
And the little flower-spirit asked the weeping guardian, why he was called great! since the sole object for which he had labored, was to subject the bright beings of the soul to the groveling ones of flesh.