decline, which,
it seems, was hereditary in her family. He felt her death as a calamity
which depressed his heart to the uttermost depths of affliction, and
from which, indeed, he never recovered. All that remained to him after
her demise was a beautiful little girl, around whom his affections
gathered with a degree of tenderness that was rendered almost painful
by the apprehension of her loss. Agnes, from her eighth or ninth year,
began to manifest slight symptoms of the same fatal malady which had
carried away her mother. These attacks filled his heart with those
fearful forebodings, which, whilst they threw him into a state of terror
and alarm, at the same time rendered the love he bore her such as may
be imagined, but cannot be expressed. It is only when we feel the
probability of losing a beloved object that the heart awakens to a more
exquisite perception of its affections for it, and wonders, when the
painful symptoms of disease appear, why it was heretofore unconscious
of the full extent of its love. Such was the nature of Mr. Hamilton's
feelings for his daughter, whenever the short cough or hectic cheek
happened to make their appearance from time to time, and foreshadow,
as it were, the certainty of an early death; and then he should be
childless--a lonely man in the world, possessing a heart overflowing
with affection, and yet without an object on which he could lavish it,
as now, with happiness and delight. He looked, therefore, upon decline
as upon an approaching foe, and the father's heart became sentinel
for the welfare of his child, and watched every symptom of the dreaded
disease that threatened her, with a vigilance that never slept. Under
such circumstances we need not again assure our readers that his
parental tenderness for this beautiful girl--now his "only one," as
he used to call her--was such as is rare even in the most affectionate
families; but in this case the slight and doubtful tenure which his
apprehensions told him he had of her existence raised his love of her
almost to idolatry. Still she improved in person, grace, and intellect;
and although an occasional shadow, as transient as that which passes
over and makes dim the flowery fields of May or April, darkened her
father's heart for a time, yet it passed away, and she danced on in the
light of youthful happiness, without a single trace of anxiety or care.
Her father's affection for her was not, however, confined to herself;
on the contrar