He returns refreshed and exhilarated by his little excursion, and entertains, with even more than his usual sociability, the friends who call upon him.
When all are gone, he retires to his bed. It is about ten o’clock. He coughs slightly. In a moment his wife is at his side. He cannot speak. In a few minutes he has ceased to breathe.
He has gone forever!
He is gone forever. Yet he has left behind pictures of himself, unwittingly sketched by his own faithful hand,—beautiful as they are true, as they are dear.
There is the innocent child, happy in Sabbath serenity and service; the good boy, delighting himself in the pretty shop of the jeweller, and writing to his mother to the accompaniment of the charming music-box; the lonely apprentice, tempted to spend the Sabbath in strolling about the city; the youth, suddenly stopping himself in the path he has carelessly taken, and retiring to the solitude of his own chamber, and there, with sane seriousness, contemplating the great issues of life, and deliberately choosing to be an educated Christian gentleman, and calmly taking all practicable methods that he deems likely to strengthen and discipline his powers for that character; there is the rapt young Christian, his whole being thrilling through and through with the divine harmonies of a soul at one with nature and with God; the willing mechanic, cheerfully fettering his faculties to the most earthly of all innocent things—the acquisition of manual skill; the devout worshipper “in the spirit on the Lord’s Day,” and on other days, loosening every thought of earth, and drifting away among infinite things on the waves of a church anthem; there is the profound thinker, unravelling the golden thread of eternal truth from the tangled conscience of a kitchen-maid; the enthusiastic worker gladly putting on the harness of the public journalist; the uncrowned martyr of the broker’s office bleeding to death in secret, rather than violate, openly or secretly, his moral sense; the genial gentleman, offering to the clasp of others the warm hand of friendship and the not empty one of charity; the mature Christian, in full armor straightening and steadying himself against the shock of ingratitude and dishonor; the wounded conqueror, tenderly borne from the battle-field by the hands of angels, visible and invisible, to heal and grow young again on the happy slopes of heaven.
Are not these life-pictures beautiful, glorious? Who would not rather such should be the history of his own life, than stand idly by while the years, one after another, drop away from his allotted time, even though he outlast the threescore and ten?
And yet, as has been before intimated, the whole secret of such a life seems to be the early adoption of, and unwavering adherence to, a complete system of Christian morals. Any New England boy of ordinary abilities, if he will, can compass all that. It is the dictate of common sense to do it. Look at it. Here you are, in existence; you cannot help that, even if you should wish to do so. Even if you should so mutilate your body that your lungs could not breathe nor your heart beat, you could not stop being alive. You are alive in a universe governed by certain laws. You did not make the laws, you cannot alter them. You may struggle against them; it will not make any difference; you cannot change them. You can break them, and make yourself contemptible and unhappy; you can obey them, and grow powerful and holy and happy. Walter Aimwell chose to obey.
He is gone forever. It is all over. The story is ended.
And some may say, What does it all signify? Is it not the same old legend of human life?—human life coming in like the new tide that swashes among the piers and slaps at the rocks on the shore, and, ebbing again, leaves all as before?