Sometimes,
the sunlight broke over my toil, and I sang to the wheel as it was
rolling; but sometimes again there were shadows, and the wheel was
then heavy and slower. Sometimes, the threads grew so tangled, that I
sighed with impatience and worry, the weft bears the marks in the
weaving--they are plain, in unwinding the pirns--and still, 'twas a
labor of love, this patchwork of sunlight and shadow, this discord of
sorrow and song.
"The fragment of a life, however typical, is not the sample of an even
web" said George Eliot, and who knew the nature of the warp and weft
of our human fabric better than she! We pass from our joy to our
sorrow, as the night passes into the day, it is part and parcel of the
mechanism of our daily lives, smiling and sighing, we spin and we
weave till the twilight's gray dusk overtakes us--then our tired hands
are folded together, and the Master takes care of the rest.
From Alice Merivale's wedding, I was called to Hortense de Beaumont's
bedside. In the comparatively short interval of our separation, she
had wasted almost beyond recognition. We were mistaken when we
persuaded ourselves, that she had baffled her former attack, she had
never quite rallied, and when the March winds began to blow, her frail
constitution gave way anew. She drooped so quickly, that it was too
late when real danger was apprehended, to take her to a warmer refuge.
Madame de Beaumont looked little better than her invalid daughter from
weeping and worrying, when I arrived.
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