* * * * *
Well it is even so, that the passionate dreams of youth break up and
wither. Vanity becomes tempered with wholesome pride; and passion yields
to the riper judgment of manhood,--even as the August heats pass on,
and over, into the genial glow of a September sun. There is a strong
growth in the struggles against mortified pride; and then only does the
youth get an ennobling consciousness of that manhood which is dawning in
him, when he has fairly surmounted those puny vexations which a wounded
vanity creates.
Now your heart is driven home; and that cherished place, where so little
while ago you wore your vanities with an air that mocked even your
grief, and that subdued your better nature, seems to stretch toward you
over long miles of distance its wings of love, and to welcome back to
the sister's and the father's heart, not the self-sufficient and
vaunting youth, but the brother and son--the schoolboy Clarence. Like a
thirsty child, you stray in thought to that fountain of cheer, and live
again--your vanity crushed, your wild hope broken--in the warm and
natural affections of the boyish home.
Clouds weave the SUMMER into the season of AUTUMN; and
YOUTH rises from dashed hopes into the stature of a
MAN.
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