Thus our little family, detached from its moorings by an untoward event, floated for a while like driftwood on the turbulent stream, only at last to be dispersed and lost. Saddest of days were these to me, for doubly unfortunate is the child bereft of a mother's love. All the warmth and sweet juices of life that make childhood a vision of love are lodged in her breast, and with her gone the gates of heaven are as if closed forever. In this way, and as I have described, there passed out of the world's busy life two youthful and loving hearts that only a little while before had fondly looked forward to a life of companionship and sweet contentment.
All men, and more especially those of a sympathetic nature, have in their youth not one divinity only, but many, toward which their minds turn with love and fond entreaty. Afterward, when these romantic attachments have given place to other and more serious things, our lives are still colored by them, and to our lasting benefit. For such attachments, however evanescent, shape the destinies of men and sweeten their lives as with the gentle fragrance of a flower.
Nor are we less sincere in youth because the glass that reflects the image of our love to-day shadows forth another picture quite as attractive on the morrow. All are real, and add to the attractiveness of men's lives, as does every comforting or ennobling thought. The opening prospect of youth ever mirrors the present to the exclusion of the future, for which it has no thought; and, similarly, the newness of the world and its constant changes crowd out the imagery of yesterday with the expectations of to-day. For that which is past there is, for the present, no retrospective glance. Its attachments and delusions, however, are none the less real, and though seemingly without purpose, serve to enrich the heart and build up a love of life's graces that sweetens and softens the character of men forever afterward. Lacking such food, the mind and heart are deficient in the things that make men something more than animals. For the imagery of life, be it good or bad, has its growth in youth, but its pictures pass so quickly, one upon the other, that only in after years do they recur to charm our lives with their reflected glow or darken it with their somber shadows.