Not one is gone. Frank indeed--that wild fellow of a youth, who
has wrought your heart into perplexing anxieties again and again, as you
have seen the wayward dashes of his young blood--is often away. But his
heart yet centres where yours centres; and his absence is only a nearer
and bolder strife with that fierce world whose circumstances every man
of force and energy is born to conquer.
His return from time to time with that proud figure of opening
manliness, and that full flush of health, speaks to your affections as
you could never have believed it would. It is not for a man, who is the
father of a man, to show any weakness of the heart, or any
over-sensitiveness, in those ties which bind him to his kin. And
yet--yet, as you sit by your fireside, with your clear, gray eye
feasting in its feebleness on that proud figure of a man who calls you
"father,"--and as you see his fond and loving attentions to that one who
has been your partner in all anxieties and joys, there _is_ a throbbing
within your bosom that makes you almost wish him young again,--that you
might embrace him now, as when he warbled in your rejoicing ear those
first words of love!--Ah, how little does a son know the secret and
craving tenderness of a parent,--how little conception has he of those
silent bursts of fondness and of joy which attend his coming, and which
crown his parting!
There is young Madge too,--dark-eyed, tall, with a pensive shadow
resting on her face,--the very image of refinement and of delicacy.
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