Eliza Buckminster Lee

“ The old woman saw that she was pitied, and a more gentle expression came into her eyes, as she fixed them on Edith.
"My child," she said, "we can learn to bear sorrow, bereavement, the death of all that are twined with our own souls, old age, solitude,—all but remorse—all but remorse;" and the last word was pronounced almost in a whisper.
"And cannot you turn to God?" said Edith; "cannot you pray? God has invited all who are sinners to come to him." ”

“ Dinah, an interested observer of every passing emotion, said, softly, "The cloud is not gone over yet; a few more tears, and it will pass away from her young brow, and then it will be fair as your own."
"It is too fair already," answered Edith; "so much beauty will be hard to guide; and then look at that dark, wayward expression."
"Say not so, my dear mistress;" and Dinah drew back the hair from her fair forehead. "Look at her beautiful face: in a few days your heart will yearn to her as mine does to you." ”

“ I awake from dreams of you to feel your presence still with me; and my first emotion is gratitude to God for having given me this happiness. Forgive me, beloved father! that I can be so content without you! The bonds of nature are weakened, when an absorbing emotion fills the heart. The time may come when nature will be avenged. Ah, it cannot be wrong to love as I do. God has opened this fountain in the desert of life, as a solace for all its evils. Ah, how can those who love be sufficiently grateful to God? Every hour should be an act of adoration and praise. ”

“ He started up. "It is not too late to repair this dreadful evil: it will be easy for you to escape. If I cannot gain a reversion of the sentence, we can escape: we will leave this country of delusion and error; we will go home—to England. There, O Edith—"
The blood for a moment rushed to Edith's cheek and brow; but she answered, sadly, "No, Seymore, it cannot be; after all that has passed, it would ruin your character, your prospects, your usefulness, forever. We are too weak to stem, to oppose this mad delusion. Bigotry and power are all around us." ”

“ Who would die and be wholly forgotten? We long intensely to live in the hearts that love us now. We would not pass away "like the summer-dried fountain," forgotten when its sound has ceased. We would have our lowly grave visited by holy, twilight thoughts, and our image return at the hour of prayer. How few are thus remembered! Now Edith thought of her father, and all the yearning of her heart, which her love for Seymore had stifled, came back, and torrents of tears flowed as she recalled her happy childhood. ”

“ Strong and deep affections were almost always disappointed; and, if not, death must come and sever the dearest ties;" and she stooped down and kissed Edith's hand, which she held in hers.
Poor Dinah! she little knew how entirely her own heart was bound up in Edith.
"But what can we live for, if not for love?" said Edith.
"For many things," answered Dinah, in her simple and quiet manner; "to grow better ourselves, and to do good to others; to make sacrifices, and to love all good works." ”

“ Men and devils shall oppress the innocent. The good like you, the innocent and good, shall not escape!" Then she looked at the sleeping child: "Can the lamb dwell with the tiger, or the dove nestle with the hawk? But you have promised: you will keep your word; and when God counts his jewels"—
Edith arose from her knees, and trembled like a leaf. With inexpressible joy, her eyes fell on her own Dinah, standing looking on, with the deepest awe in her countenance. She had risen before the dawn, and come to relieve her young mistress, and had entered while Edith was kneeling. ”

“ The color rushed to Edith's pale cheek, as she silently gave him her hand; but she felt a calmness which she could not herself understand. A change had been wrought in her character by that nightly death-bed, and by four days of lonely sorrow. She felt that she must rely on herself.
The changes that are wrought by sorrow and reflection in a timid woman are not less apparent than those wrought by love. They seem, at first, to take from the exquisite feminineness of the character, but they bring out the latent beauty and strength of her spiritual nature. ”

“ You can have no cause for self-reproach."
"Innocent! O, say not that you are innocent! God has many ways of trying his elect. You he has tried severely with temptations from the prince of evil. He chooses souls like yours. O, Edith, for my sake, for your own sake, acknowledge that you have been tempted. It only is required that you should say you have been deceived; then all will be well."
For a moment, Edith's face was crimsoned. "What! become a traitor to my own soul! lose forever the unsullied jewel of truth, and the peace of a pure conscience! ”

“ As she stood beside Edith, she shook with age and terror; and Edith, touched with pity, though she trembled herself, and was deadly pale, tried to give her a smile of hope and encouragement. The poor old wretch did not need it: she not only confessed to every thing of which she was accused, but added such circumstances of time and place, and of the various forms the devil had taken in her person, that Edith almost sickened with disgust. She could not understand how an old person, on the very verge of the grave, could wish to lengthen out her few years by such base and wicked lies. ”

“ The elasticity of the air excited the young spirits of Edith. She was gay, and, like a young fawn, she fluttered around her father, sometimes galloping her rough little pony in front, and then returning, she would give a gentle cut with her whip to her father's horse, who, with head down, and plodding indifference, regarded it no more than he did a fly.
Mr. Grafton, delighted with his daughter's playfulness, looked at her with a quiet, tender smile: her gayety, to him, was like the play of her infancy, and he delighted to think that she was yet young and happy. ”

“ The teachings of nature are open to all. The poor heart-broken mother sees, in the parent leaves that enfold the tender heart of the young plant, and in the bird that strips her own breast of its down to shelter her young from the night air, the same instinct that teaches her to cherish the child of sorrow. He who addressed the poor and illiterate drew his illustrations from nature: the lily of the field, the fowls of the air, and the young ravens, he made his teachers to those who, like him, lived in the open air, and were peculiarly susceptible to all the influences of nature. ”

“ The unexpected sight of her mother's picture had overpowered Edith. O that we should receive a mother's love in infancy, when we cannot value or understand it; and, in after life, when we need it most, when we long for the heart that has cherished us, "we must go back to some almost forgotten grave," where that warm heart lies that loved us as no other will ever love us.
Seymore was terrified: he had never seen grief like this, and he walked the room with rapid and agitated steps. ”

“ Then seeing the crimson overspread Edith's cheek, she added, "perhaps your warm tears have revived it." But, as if ashamed of having said something not perfectly true, she took Edith's hand, looked earnestly in her face, as if asking an explanation of this sudden change.
Edith was wholly overcome. She threw herself into the arms of the faithful slave, and longed to hide herself there. None but a mother could understand her feelings, or one who had been to her in the place of a mother, and knew every beating of her innocent heart. ”

“ Immediately under the cliff, and sheltered like a swallow's nest, was the smallest of human habitations; so dark, and old, and moss-grown, that it seemed a part of the rock against which it rested. It consisted of one room: a door and single pane of glass admitted the light, and the nets hanging around, and an old boat drawn up on the beach, indicated that it was the shelter of a fisherman.
The Indian summer still continued, and a few mornings after the little journey, Edith was induced, by the soft beauty of the weather, to visit the cove. ”

“ She said to herself, "She shall never need a mother's care. I know the heart of the orphan, and no unkindness shall ever make her feel that she is motherless."
The poor little Phoebe had cried herself to sleep in Dinah's arms, and had been put to bed in her soiled and dirty state. The next morning a clean new dress banished the memory of her grandmother, and her childish tears were dried, and grief forgotten.
Dinah had brought to aid her the power of soap and water, and had disentangled her really soft and beautiful hair; and when Edith came down, she would scarcely have known her again. ”

“ The child was silent.
"Do you remember the fever you had soon after? when you were restless in your bed, and I took you in my arms, and all night my bosom was your pillow, and I watched you many nights, and thought not of sleep or fatigue when I held your little hand, burning with fever, in my own all night? Ah! you loved me then; you will love me again, and—"
"I never loved you," said the child; "I do not love you now."
Edith put her quickly from her arms, and turning to the man who was present, "Take her away," she said; "take the poor child away. O, my God! ”

“ I cannot blush to be confounded with the guilty; for it is my unwillingness to sully my conscience with a lie that leads me there."
Seymore was silent for a few moments. "Edith," he said at last, straining both her hands in his, "have you been able to think how cruel this death may be? Have you fortitude? Can you bear to think of it?" and he shuddered, and covered his face with his hands.
Edith for a moment turned pale. "I have ever shrunk," she said, "from physical pain. My own extreme timidity has never given me courage to bear the least of its evils. ”

“ That religion should be a different thing from this pervading love and reverence, I cannot yet understand. Faith is the gift of God; such faith as you, my dear friend, wish me to possess; but it seems to me, like all the other precious gifts of the soul, to be obtained by earnest prayer and infinite strivings. When the young man mentioned in the gospel came to our Saviour, he demanded of him no profession of mysterious faith, but only a proof of disinterested love.
Religion is not a distinct thing from the every-day life, as—pardon me, my dear friend—I think you would make it. ”

“ Heartfelt grief seemed to shadow every countenance, but the severe and reserved character of the New England Puritans allowed them to make no demonstration of sorrow: they shut up within themselves every trace of emotion, and spoke only in whispers, with a stern, determined air.
The garb and appearance of the people was rough and homely. There were farmers with their wives, on pillions; fishermen with their rough sea-coats; aged women, bent and wrinkled, who had come to lay in the grave one whom they had hoped would have prayed at and blessed their own burial. ”

“ As they bore the body to the grave, they sang an anthem, and, as it entered the little enclosure, the groups on each side receded, and uncovered their heads. The boys were hushed to awe, as the anthem rose on the evening air; the sun sank behind the forest, and its last rays were reflected from the grave of this servant of God.
The exquisite beauty of the scene oppressed and wearied Edith as she returned to her solitary home. She felt that though nature may sympathize with our joy, there is nothing in her bosom that responds to our sorrow.
But she did not return alone: Seymore had followed her ”

“ His soul is warmed and elevated when he remembers that devoted company, who were sustained amid hardship and every privation, on the trackless ocean, and in the mysterious and appalling solitudes of the forest, by a firm devotion to duty, and an all-pervading sense of the immediate presence of God.
The faults of our ancestors were the faults of their age. It is not now understood—and how wide from it was the conviction then!—that even toleration implies intoleration. Who is to judge what opinions are to be tolerated? He whom circumstance has invested at the moment with power? ”

“ Having learned from that severe teacher, experience, how prone we are to err, and how often we need forgiveness from each other, as well as from Heaven; having found, also, that the jewel of true love, though sullied by error, and sometimes mixed with baser stones, yet, like the diamond, can never lose its value,—they will cherish the belief that Seymore found, in the devoted affection of Edith, a balm for his wounded spirit, and an unfailing strength for the duties and trials of life. ”

“ Truth is not to be set aside, in looking at our own characters. We should do the same justice to ourselves that we do to others. There is a secret dishonesty in depreciating ourselves. Could I esteem and honor you as I do, were you what you call yourself? I honor you for all the noble exertions you have made,—for the ardor of your love of truth and duty. Ah, call me not a partial and blinded judge: your true honor and your most precious happiness are too dear to me to allow me to be a false or partial friend. ”