.... Will the world not excuse me, if when, by a side-glance, I saw on the paternal countenance prayers for the son, and tears of joy trickling down into the prayer; and when I noticed on the countenance of the grandmother far darker and fast-hidden drops, which she could not restrain, while I, in answer to the ancient question, engaged to provide for the child if its parents died,—am I not to be excused if I then cast my eyes deep down on my little godson, merely to hide their running over?—For I remembered that his father might perhaps this very day grow pale and cold before a suddenly arising mask of Death; I thought how the poor little one had only changed his bent posture in the womb with a freer one, to bend and cramp himself erelong more harshly in the strait arena of life; I thought of his inevitable follies, and errors, and sins; of these soiled steps to the Grecian Temple of our Perfection; I thought that one day his own fire of genius might reduce himself to ashes, as a man that is electrified can kill himself with his own lightning..… All the theological wishes, which, on the godson-billet printed over with them, I placed in his young bosom, were glowing written in mine..… But the white feathered-pink of my joy had then, as it always has, a bloody point within it,—I again, as it always is, went to nest, like a woodpecker, in a skull And as I am doing so even now, let the describing of the baptism be over for to-day, and proceed again to-morrow..…
