And, sitting thus, holding
vague companionship with the merely mortal, the presence of that
which was not her father, which was like him only to remind her
that it was not he, and which must so soon cease to resemble him,
there sprang, as in the very footprint of Death, yet another
flower of rarest comfort--a strong feeling, namely, of the
briefness of time, and the certainty of the messenger's return to
fetch herself. Her soul did not sink into peace, but a strange
peace awoke in her spirit. She heard the spring of the great
clock that measures the years rushing rapidly down with a
feverous whir, and saw the hands that measure the weeks and
months careering around its face; while Death, like one of the
white-robed angels in the tomb of the Lord, sat watching, with
patient smile, for the hour when he should be wanted to go for
her. Thus mingled her broken watch, her father's death, and Jean
Paul's dream; and the fancy might well comfort her.
I will not linger much more over the crumbling time. It is good
for those who are in it, specially good for those who come out of
it chastened and resolved; but I doubt if any prolonged
contemplation of death is desirable for those whose business it
now is to live, and whose fate it is ere long to die. It is a
closing of God's hand upon us to squeeze some of the bad blood
out of us, and, when it relaxes, we must live the more
diligently--not to get ready for death, but to get more life.
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