Alas! alas! she is his little girl no longer. She is another man's sweetheart, and will one day be his wife. It is the fashion in this world; it has God's favor and sanction.
All that was long ago. It is nearing the end of the century, and the little girl who thought it a great thing to see the half-century mark, bids fair to shake hands with the new one. There have been many changes, there have been sorrows and deaths, and such exquisite satisfying happiness that she could say with the poet,--
"Let come what come may I shall have had my day."
She is in the older generation now, and a grandmother. You may see her in Central Park, or some of the surburban places, a fair, sweet small personage, with a face more nearly beautiful than in her girlhood. Her hair has that shining silvery tint, her complexion is clear and fine, and her eyes, though they have wept bitter tears, still look out gladly, serenely, on life.
In the carriage will be her twin granddaughters, and sometimes a young man, her son. They are pretty children, and will be "summer girls" when their time comes, and "winter girls" as well, clad in cloth and velvet and furs. They will dance Germans instead of the bewildering Spanish dance she had that first night with her lover. Even children have changed in half a century. Beauty is no longer considered a delusion and a snare. Physical culture gives strength and grace and growth.
The lover of her youth and the husband of her love, and her first-born daughter, who was wedded, and who with her husband faced a railroad tragedy and were its victims, have gone into that "goodly land and large." It seems to many of us as we grow older that there is only a thin wall between this and the other country where we shall see them again. Sometimes she can almost fancy them leaning over the jasper walls, like the Blessed Damosel, and smiling down on her. There are so many of them now! And the children were given to her. They are spoiled, all the aunts and cousins declare. But grandmamma lives another youth over in them,--a delightful life, rich in love and interest.
For conditions have changed. The world, and all that therein is, has changed. It is Greater New York now, and it stretches out everywhere. What was Brooklyn, and Williamsburg, and many a pretty town up above the city, have all been merged into one grand metropolis. What it will do in the next fifty years passes conjecture.