ny respect, the same breathing creature that you
beheld three years back? I think not. Whither, then, has the sprite
vanished? In some hidden fairy nook, in some mysterious cloud-land he must
exist still. Again, in your slim-formed girl of eight years, you look in
vain for the sturdy elf of five. Gone? No; that can not be--"a thing of
beauty is a joy forever." Close your eyes: you have her there! A
breeze-like, sportive buoyant thing; a thing of breathing, laughing,
unmistakable life; she is mirrored on your retina as plainly as ever was
dancing sunbeam on a brook. The very trick of her lip--of her eye; the
mischief-smile, the sidelong saucy glance,

"That seems to say,
'I know you love me, Mr. Grey:' "

is it not traced there--all, every line, as clear as when it brightened the
atmosphere about you in the days that are no more? To be sure it is; and
being so, the thing must exist--somewhere.

I never was more fully possessed with this conviction than once during the
winter of last year. It was Christmas-eve. I was sitting alone, in my old
arm-chair, and had been looking forward to the fast-coming festival day
with many mingled thoughts--some tender, but regretful; others hopeful yet
sad; some serious, and even solemn. As I laid my head back and sat thus
with closed eyes, listening to the church-clock as it struck the hour, I
could not but feel that I was passing--very slowly and gently it is
true--toward a time when the closing of the grave would shut out even that
sound so familiar to my ear; and when other and more precious sounds of
life--human voices, dearer than all else, would cease to have any meanings
for me--and even their very echoes be hushed in the silence of the one long
sleep. Following the train of association, it was natural that I should
recur to the hour when that same church's bells had chimed my
wedding-peal. I seemed to hear their music once again; and other music
sweeter still--the music of young vows that "that kept the word of promise
to the ear, and broke it" _not_ "to the hope." Next in succession came the
recollection of my children. I seemed to lose sight of their present
identity, and to be carried away in thought to times and scenes far back
in my long-departed youth, when they were growing up around my
knees--beautiful forms of all ages, from the tender nursling of a single
year springing with outstretched arms into my bosom, to the somewhat rough
but ingenuous b