Grief has a strange power in opening the hearts of those who sorrow in common. The father, who has seemed to you, not so much neglectful, as careless of your aims and purposes,—toward whom there have been in your younger years yearnings of affection which his chilliness of manner has seemed to repress, now grows under the sad light of the broken household into a friend. The heart feels a joy it cannot express, in its freedom to love and to cherish. There is a pleasure wholly new to you in telling him of your youthful projects, in listening to his questionings, in seeking his opinions, and in yielding to his judgment.

It is a sad thing for the child, and quite as sad for the parent, when this confidence is unknown. Many and many a time with a bursting heart you have longed to tell him of some boyish grief, or to ask his guidance out of some boyish trouble; but at the first sight of that calm, inflexible face, and at the first sound of his measured words, your enthusiastic yearnings toward his love and his counsels have all turned back upon your eager and sorrowing heart, and you have gone away to hide in secret the tears which the lack of his sympathy has wrung from your soul.

But now over the tomb of her, for whom you weep in common, there is a new light breaking; and your only fear is lest you weary him with what may seem a barren show of your confidence.

Nelly too is nearer now than ever; and with her you have no fears of your extravagance; you listen delightfully there by the evening flame to all that she tells you of the neighbors of your boyhood. You shudder somewhat at her genial praises of the blue-eyed Madge,—a shudder that you can hardly account for, and which you do not seek to explain. It may be that there is a clinging and tender memory yet—wakened by the home atmosphere—of the divided sixpence.

Of your quondam friend, Frank, the pleasant recollection of whom revives again under the old roof-tree, she tells you very little,—and that little in a hesitating and indifferent way that utterly surprises you. Can it be, you think, that there has been some cause of unkindness?

----Clarence is still very young!

The fire glows warmly upon the accustomed hearth-stone, and—save that vacant place never to be filled again—a home cheer reigns even in this time of your mourning. The spirit of the lost parent seems to linger over the remnant of the household; and the Bible upon its stand—the book she loved so well—the book so sadly forgotten—seems still to open on you its promises in her sweet tones, and to call you, as it were, with her angel-voice to the land that she inherits.

And when late night has come, and the household is quiet, you call up in the darkness of your chamber that other night of grief which followed upon the death of Charlie. That was the boy's vision of death; and this is the youthful vision. Yet essentially there is but little difference. Death levels the capacities of the living as it levels the strength of its victims. It is as grand to the man as to the boy, its teachings are as deep for age as for infancy.

You may learn its manner, and estimate its approaches; but when it comes, it comes always with the same awful front that it wore to your boyhood. Reason and Revelation may point to rich issues that unfold from its very darkness; yet all these are no more to your bodily sense, and no more to your enlightened hope, than those foreshadowings of peace which rest like a halo on the spirit of the child as he prays in guileless tones—Our Father, who art in Heaven!

It is a holy and a placid grief that comes over you,—not crushing, but bringing to life from the grave of boyhood all its better and nobler instincts. In their light your wild plans of youth look sadly misshapen and in the impulse of the hour you abandon them; holy resolutions beam again upon your soul like sunlight, your purposes seem bathed in goodness. There is an effervescence of the spirit that carries away all foul matter, and leaves you in a state of calm that seems kindred to the land and to the life whither the sainted mother has gone.

This calm brings a smile in the middle of tears, and an inward looking and leaning toward that Eternal Power which governs and guides us;—with that smile and that leaning, sleep comes like an angelic minister, and fondles your wearied frame and thought into that repose which is the mirror of the Destroyer.

----Poor Clarence, he is like the rest of the world,—whose goodness lies chiefly in the occasional throbs of a better nature, which soon subside, and leave them upon the old level of desire.

As you lie between waking and sleeping, you have a fancy of a sound at your door;—it seems to open softly, and the tall figure of your father, wrapped in his dressing-gown, stands over you, and gazes—as he gazed at you before;—his look is very mournful; and he murmurs your mother's name—and sighs—and looks again—and passes out.

At morning you cannot tell if it was real or a dream. Those higher resolves too, which grief and the night made, seem very vague and shadowy. Life with its ambitious and cankerous desires wakes again. You do not feel them at first; the subjugation of holy thoughts and of reaches toward the Infinite, leave their traces on you, and perhaps bewilder you into a half-consciousness of strength. But at the first touch of the grosser elements about you,—on your very first entrance upon those duties which quicken pride or shame, and which are pointing at you from every quarter,—your holy calm, your high-born purpose, your spiritual cleavings, pass away, like the electricity of August storms drawn down by the thousand glittering turrets of a city!

The world is stronger than the night; and the bindings of sense are tenfold stronger than the most exquisite delirium of soul. This makes you feel, or will one day make you feel, that life,—strong life and sound life,—that life which lends approaches to the Infinite, and takes hold on Heaven, is not so much a Progress as it is a Resistance!

There is one special confidence which, in all your talk about plans and purposes, you do not give to your father: you reserve that for the ear of Nelly alone. Why happens it that a father is almost the last confidant that a son makes in any matter deeply affecting the feelings? Is it the fear that a father may regard such matter as boyish? Is it a lingering suspicion of your own childishness; or of that extreme of affection which reduces you to childishness?

Why is it always that a man, of whatever age or condition, forbears to exhibit to those whose respect for his judgment and mental abilities only he seeks, the most earnest qualities of the heart, and those intenser susceptibilities of love which underlie his nature, and which give a color in spite of him to the habit of his life? Why is he so morbidly anxious to keep out of sight any extravagances of affection, when he blurts officiously to the world his extravagances of action and of thought? Can any lover explain me this?

Again, why is a sister the one of all others to whom you first whisper the dawnings of any strong emotion,—as if it were a weakness that her charity alone could cover?

However this may be, you have a long story for Nelly's ear. It is some days after your return: you are strolling down a quiet, wooded lane,—a remembered place,—when you first open to her your heart. Your talk is of Laura Dalton. You describe her to Nelly with the extravagance of a glowing hope. You picture those qualities that have attracted you most; you dwell upon her beauty, her elegant figure, her grace of conversation, her accomplishments. You make a study that feeds your passion as you go on. You rise by the very glow of your speech into a frenzy of feeling that she has never excited before. You are quite sure that you would be wretched and miserable without her.

"Do you mean to marry her?" says Nelly.

It is a question that gives a swift bound to the blood of youth. It involves the idea of possession, and of the dependence of the cherished one upon your own arm and strength. But the admiration you entertain seems almost too lofty for this; Nelly's question makes you diffident of reply; and you lose yourself in a new story of those excellencies of speech and of figure which have so charmed you.

Nelly's eye on a sudden becomes full of tears.

----"What is it, Nelly?"

"Our mother, Clarence."

The word and the thought dampen your ardor; the sweet watchfulness and gentle kindness of that parent for an instant make a sad contrast with the showy qualities you have been naming; and the spirit of that mother—called up by Nelly's words—seems to hang over you with an anxious love that subdues all your pride of passion.

But this passes; and now—half believing that Nelly's thoughts have run over the same ground with yours—you turn special pleader for your fancy. You argue for the beauty which you just now affirmed; you do your utmost to win over Nelly to some burst of admiration. Yet there she sits beside you, thoughtfully and half sadly, playing with the frail autumn flowers that grow at her side. What can she be thinking? You ask it by a look.

She smiles,—takes your hand, for she will not let you grow angry,—

"I was thinking, Clarence, whether this Laura Dalton would, after all, make a good wife,—such an one as you would love always?"