Spring buds and blossoms, under the glowing sun of April, nurture
at their heart those firstlings of fruit which the heat of summer shall
ripen.
You little know--and for this you may well thank Heaven--that you are
leaving the Spring of life, and that you are floating fast from the
shady sources of your years into heat, bustle, and storm. Your dreams
are now faint, flickering shadows, that play like fire-flies in the
coppices of leafy June. They have no rule but the rule of infantile
desire; they have no joys to promise greater than the joys that belong
to your passing life; they have no terrors but such terrors as the
darkness of a Spring night makes. They do not take hold on your soul as
the dreams of youth and manhood will do.
Your highest hope is shadowed in a cheerful, boyish home. You wish no
friends but the friends of boyhood; no sister but your fond Nelly; none
to love better than the playful Madge.
You forget, Clarence, that the Spring with you is the Spring with them,
and that the storms of Summer may chase wide shadows over your path and
over theirs. And you forget that Summer is even now lowering with its
mist, and with its scorching rays, upon the hem of your flowery May!
* * * * *
----The hands of the old clock upon the mantel, that ticked off the
hours when Charlie sighed and when Charlie died, draw on toward
midnight.
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