We never know what our true estimate of any one is until he or she has
been removed beyond the power of our amending or repentant love. If
such a one be called beyond that bourne whence there is no coming
back, how soft, and hallowed, and subdued a light is shed by our
tender, respectful, and sorrowing memory upon what once had been
incentives to our unforgiving and deeply injured pride. If such a one
be cast by accident of circumstances or fate so far away from the
yearning glance of our regretful eyes, so far beyond that pass, where
pleading, human voices become lost in thousand-tongued confusions, how
changed the once bright picture of our lives becomes; how vain and
purposeless all other aims, save that which, with the powerful
strength of a hope that is half despair, pursues the object of our
rash unkindness, with outstretched hands and plaintive tone,
beseeching for a pardon that may never greet our mortal ears? I, who
had lived an obstinate alien from the love and devotion of my parent,
who never went outside the narrow, rigid circle of my unyielding pride
to tempt or merit his regard, now felt a great void left within my
heart which nothing on earth could ever fill again.
When the veil of my former prejudice was rent asunder, and I could
only see the still white features and the folded hands of him from
whose timid love I had become a voluntary exile, how I hated the
sensitive young heart that had turned away in cold rebellion, when its
duty was to glow with an undaunted, even servile fidelity.
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