If I run over some sweet experience of love, (my Aunt Tabithy brightened
a little,) must I make good the fact that the loved one lives, and
expose her name and qualities to make your sympathy sound? Or shall I
not rather be working upon higher and holier ground, if I take the
passion for itself, and so weave it into words, that you and every
willing sufferer may recognize the fervor, and forget the personality?
Life, after all, is but a bundle of hints, each suggesting actual and
positive development, but rarely reaching it. And as I recall these
hints, and in fancy trace them to their issues, I am as truly dealing
with life as if my life had dealt them all to me.
This is what I would be doing in the present book. I would catch up here
and there the shreds of feeling which the brambles and roughnesses of
the world have left tangling on my heart, and weave them out into those
soft and perfect tissues which, if the world had been only a little less
rough, might now perhaps enclose my heart altogether.
"Ah," said my Aunt Tabithy, as she smoothed the stocking-leg again, with
a sigh, "there is, after all, but one youth-time; and if you put down
its memories once, you can find no second growth.
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