“Yes, mother,” said Hesper, “take me close into your bosom, and let me warm myself upon your loving heart, for greater than your daughter’s sorrow, is a conscious sense of her own selfishness and sin. I thank God in this hour of trial that you are yet spared to me--that I have your faithful bosom to shed my tears upon. I have dared once in my life, mother, to lay plans for my own future--to sketch a bright picture in my imagination, all radiant with hopes of happiness and selfish enjoyment, but I will do so no longer. The vision has passed, and left me sadder but wiser. I thank God for it! and here now, upon this sacred altar of your heart, do I pledge myself to live henceforth only for the good of others. Strengthen me, mother, and pray for me, lest my heart should fail me, for I am too weak to pray for myself.”
They knelt down upon the mound together, and the mother’s petition went up through the solemn silence, beseeching most earnestly that a blessing of strength and consolation might fall upon the heart of her sorrowing child. Those two weak women, kneeling at midnight in that lonely grave-yard, had angel guardians whose help was greater than that of man, and the words of prayer that ascended from those trembling lips, was answered by a blessing of peace, “such as the world can neither give or take away.”
“MOTHER,” said Hesper one day, after sitting in thoughtful silence for some time, “I feel that I must leave home and be doing something decided and useful, or my energies will all rust out in idleness. I have a good opportunity, too, and I think I ought to improve it. Dr. Smiley informs me that a teacher is wanting in the Institution for the Blind, and he says he will secure me the situation at once, if I desire it.”
“Dear me!” said her mother, “I hardly know how we can do without you, my child. That is, without your company, for it is true, that while your father is doing so well, and I have my health, that we really do not need you. But then I dread to have you go out into the great world, for it is cruel and cold, and has many sorrows for a young and tender heart like yours.”
“And that is one great reason why I wish to go, mother, for I desire to pass through the furnace, that I may come out strong and pure at last. I am ready for all things but idleness, that alone burdens my spirit, and leaves me to weep over sorrows that I cannot cure.”