"
My Aunt Tabithy was wrong. There is as much growth in the thoughts and
feelings that run behind us as in those that run before us. You may make
a rich, full picture of your childhood to-day; but let the hour go by,
and the darkness stoop to your pillow with its million shapes of the
past, and my word for it, you shall have some flash of childhood lighten
upon you, that was unknown to your busiest thought of the morning.
Let a week go by, and in some interval of care, as you recall the smile
of a mother, or some pale sister who is dead, a new crowd of memories
will rush upon your soul, and leave their traces in such tears as will
make you kinder and better for days and weeks. Or you shall assist at
some neighbor funeral, where the little dead one (like one you have seen
before) shall hold in its tiny grasp (as you have taught little dead
hands to do) fresh flowers, laughing flowers, lying lightly on the white
robe of the dear child,--all pale, cold, silent--
I had touched my Aunt Tabithy: she had dropped a stitch in her knitting.
I believe she was weeping.
--Aye, this brain of ours is a master-worker, whose appliances we do not
one half know; and this heart of ours is a rare storehouse, furnishing
the brain with new material every hour of our lives; and their limits we
shall not know, until they shall end--together.
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