with small-pox, and a most disastrous hump between her shoulders; short in person, somewhat short in speech, but withal, the kindest heart that ever beat! Dearly did she love to gather the unruly crowd of boys and girls around her glowing, social fire, and hush them to a grave-like stillness with the wild legends of her native isle.
Ah, well! those days have passed and gone now, for ever. We can only sit quietly by the open window and think of the “now, and what has been,” and remember with a blending of the mirthful and sorrowful—a kind of comic sadness—how we grew out of those pleasant ways; how our first influx of sentimentalism crept in about the time we put up our “elf-locks wildly floating,” and imbibed a strong disgust for long-sleeved checked aprons; how we took to reading newspaper poetry, descriptive of the “shining stars” and “silver moon,” and naturally enough, went from that to looking in the gray heavens for them; how we laid aside the favourite book, smoothed down the folds of our dress, and seated ourself methodically at the window, vis-à-vis to our mother, and gazed perseveringly at the steadfast skies, persuading ourself that we were immeasurably happy, while all the time, had we listened to the heart’s truth, tears would have been dropping for the good old times—the “joyous days of yore” with the romp in the hall, the blazing kitchen fire, the hump-backed servant girl, and the merry playmates, now slumbering beneath the sod.
So, after all, it took Time, patient teacher, to instil a full appreciation of the delights of twilight. Time brought the thousand things which make at once the charm and the sadness of that mystic hour;—the fleeting, intangible Past, the ideal hues which form a fairy halo round the most common-place occurrences; the real Present, contrasting vividly with the buried life; the last friends beyond the skies to draw our thoughts thither, and more than all, the feeling that we have tasted through experience somewhat of existence, and have earned a right to moralize upon its fleeting pleasures.
