Of this child, knowing how
wearisome to strangers is the fond exultation of parents, I shall
simply say, that he inherited his mother's beauty; the same touching
loveliness and innocence of expression, the same chiselled nose, mouth,
and chin, the same exquisite auburn hair. In many other features, not
of person merely, but also of mind and manners, as they gradually began
to open before me, this child deepened my love to him by recalling the
image of his mother; and what other image was there that I so much
wished to keep before me, whether waking or asleep? At the time to
which I am now coming but too rapidly, this child, still our only one,
and unusually premature, was within four months of completing his third
year; consequently Agnes was at that time in her twenty-first year; and
I may here add, with respect to myself, that I was in my twenty-sixth.
But, before I come to that period of wo, let me say one word on the
temper of mind which so fluent and serene a current of prosperity may
be thought to have generated. Too common a course I know it is, when
the stream of life flows with absolute tranquillity, and ruffled by no
menace of a breeze--the azure overhead never dimmed by a passing cloud,
that in such circumstances the blood stagnates: life, from excess and
plethora of sweets, becomes insipid: the spirit of action droops: and
it is oftentimes found at such seasons that slight annoyances and
molestations, or even misfortunes in a lower key, are not wholly
undesirable, as means of stimulating the lazy energies, and disturbing
a slumber which is, or soon will be, morbid in its character.
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