I am almost sure he could wear a crown
and rule a nation, and yet look upon such glories as mere accidents of
existence, that must be subject to higher aims and occupations."
"Then you are happy in the possession of very exceptional children,
Cousin Bessie," said I, shaking my towel and hanging it up to dry. My
task was finished, and I sat down beside my industrious cousin who was
now up to her elbows in a basin of flour.
"They are my chief comfort, to tell you the truth," she answered, as
if in soliloquy, while she sifted handfuls of the white powder through
her busy fingers, "and I thank God for this great compensation that
has survived all my other pleasures. There is no wretchedness, I
think, like that which must fill the heart of a mother whose children
have strayed away from her loving, clinging solicitude into the
by-ways of folly or vice. It is a dark blight upon the most buoyant
heart that ever swelled with maternal devotion. I sometimes think I
would rather have never existed, that I could forfeit all the grand
privileges of a created being destined for a noble end, rather than
have become the mother of impious and vicious children."
"Then it is well you have saved yours from such a common fate," I put
in warmly, "for I think in the world's present stage, young people
have a monopoly of all the evil tendencies to which our flesh is
prone."
"You are right there Amey, and more's the pity," cousin Bessie
answered, leaning her white palms on the sides of the dish and looking
out of the kitchen window away over the steeples of the distant
church, as if her glance fell upon the whole wicked world at once.
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