Goodness and strength in
this world are quite as apt to wear rough coats as fine ones. And the
words of thorough and self-sacrificing kindness are far more often
dressed in the uncouth sounds of retired life than in the polished
utterance of the town. Heaven has not made warm hearts and honest hearts
distinguishable by the quality of the covering. True diamonds need no
work of the artificer to reflect and multiply their rays. Goodness is
more within than without; and purity is of nearer kin to the soul than
to the body.
----And, Clarence, it may well happen that later in life--under the
gorgeous ceilings of Venetian churches, or at some splendid mass in
Notre Dame, with embroidered coats and costly silks around you--your
thoughts will run back to that little storm-beaten church, and to the
willow waving in its yard, with a Hope that _glows_, and with a tear
that you embalm!
VIII.
_A Home Scene._
And now I shall not leave this realm of boyhood, or suffer my hero to
slip away from this gala-time of his life, without a fair look at that
Home where his present pleasures lie, and where all his dreams begin and
end.
Little does the boy know, as the tide of years drifts by, floating him
out insensibly from the harbor of his home upon the great sea of
life,--what joys, what opportunities, what affections, are slipping from
him into the shades of that inexorable Past, where no man can go save on
the wings of his dreams.
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