Youth feels the
fulness of maturity before the second season of life is ended; yet is it
a vain maturity, and all the glow is deceitful. Those fruits that ripen
in summer do not last. They are sweet; they are glowing with gold; but
they melt with a luscious sweetness upon the lip. They do not give that
strength and nutriment which will bear a man bravely through the coming
chills of winter.
* * * * *
The last scene of summer changes now to the cobwebbed ceiling of an
attorney's office. Books of law, scattered ingloriously at your elbow,
speak dully to the flush of your vanities. You are seated at your
side-desk, where you have wrought at those heavy, mechanic labors of
drafting which go before a knowledge of your craft.
A letter is by you, which you regard with strange feelings: it is yet
unopened. It comes from Laura. It is in reply to one which has cost you
very much of exquisite elaboration. You have made your avowal of feeling
as much like a poem as your education would admit. Indeed it was a
pretty letter,--promising not so much the trustful love of an earnest
and devoted heart, as the fervor of a passion which consumed you, and
glowed like a furnace through the lines of your letter.
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