I am subject to another’s will and can Nor speak, nor do, without permission from her!
The fire is warm as ever; what length of heat in this hard burning anthracite! It has scarce sunk yet to the second bar of the grate, though the clock upon the churchtower has tolled eleven.
—Aye—mused I, gayly—such a heart does not grow faint, it does not spend itself in idle puffs of blaze, it does not become chilly with the passing years; but it gains and grows in strength and heat until the fire of life is covered over with the ashes of death. Strong or hot as it may be at the first, it loses nothing. It may not, indeed, as time advances, throw out, like the coal fire, when new-lit, jets of blue sparkling flame; it may not continue to bubble and gush like a fountain at its source, but it will become a strong river of flowing charities.
Clitumnus breaks from under the Tuscan mountains, almost a flood; on a glorious spring day I leaned down and tasted the water, as it boiled from its sources; the little temple of white marble—the mountain sides gray with olive orchards—the white streak of road—the tall poplars of the river margin were glistening in the bright Italian sunlight around me. Later, I saw it when it had become a river—still clear and strong, flowing serenely between its prairie banks, on which the white cattle of the valley browsed; and still farther down I welcomed it, where it joins the Arno—flowing slowly under wooded shores, skirting the fair Florence and the bounteous fields of the bright Cascino; gathering strength and volume, till between Pisa and Leghorn—in sight of the wondrous Leaning Tower and the ship-masts of the Tuscan port—it gave its waters to its life’s grave—the sea.
The recollection blended sweetly now with my musings, over my garret grate, and offered a flowing image to bear along upon its bosom the affections that were grouping in my reverie.
It is a strange force of the mind and of the fancy that can set the objects which are closest to the heart far down the lapse of time. Even now, as the fire fades slightly, and sinks slowly toward the bar, which is the dial of my hours, I seem to see that image of love which has played about the fire-glow of my grate—years hence. It still covers the same warm, trustful, religious heart. Trials have tried it; afflictions have weighed upon it; danger has scared it; and death is coming near to subdue it; but still it is the same.