The result was a
character, in its social aspect, of quite the common sort.
A good son and brother, a kind neighbor, an active man of
business--in all these outward relations he was but one of
a class, which surrounding conditions have made the majority
among us. In the more delicate and individual relations, he
never approached but two mortals, my mother and myself.
'His love for my mother was the green spot on which he
stood apart from the common-places of a mere bread-winning,
bread-bestowing existence. She was one of those fair and
flower-like natures, which sometimes spring up even beside the
most dusty highways of life--a creature not to be shaped into
a merely useful instrument, but bound by one law with the blue
sky, the dew, and the frolic birds. Of all persons whom I
have known, she had in her most of the angelic,--of that
spontaneous love for every living thing, for man, and beast,
and tree, which restores the golden age.'
DEATH IN THE HOUSE.
'My earliest recollection is of a death,--the death of a
sister, two years younger than myself. Probably there is a
sense of childish endearments, such as belong to this tie,
mingled with that of loss, of wonder, and mystery; but these
last are prominent in memory.
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