“ In many a village and in many a house is hidden a true Eden, which has neither been named nor marked down; for happiness is fond of covering over and concealing her tenderest flowers. Gottreich reposed in such tenderness of love and bliss, of poetry and religion, of spring-time, of the past and of the future, that, in the depths of his heart, he feared to speak out his happiness, save in prayer. In prayer, thought he, man may say all his happiness and his misery. ”

“ Hast thou not felt the love of the Infinite, when he veiled himself in his image, the loving hearts of men; as the sun, which reflects its light not on the moon only, but on the morning and evening star also, and on every little twinkler, even the farthest from our earth?
“Canst thou forget, in the dark hour, that there have been mighty men among us, and that thou art following after them? Raise thyself, like the spirits who stood upon their mountains, having the storms of life only about them, never above them! ”

“ As the wagon rolled toward home, people who happened to be at their doors or windows said: “That is old Mrs. Frank May. What a clear, sweet voice she has for a woman of her years!”
Mrs. May looked in her glass that night longer than she had done for years. “I am changed,” said she to herself. “No wonder Hatty didn’t know me!” She took from the till of her trunk a locket containing a braid of glossy black hair. She gazed at it awhile, and then took off her spectacles, to wipe from them the moisture of her tears. “And this is my first meeting with Hatty since we exchanged lockets!” ”

“ If you wish to learn the true value of marriage,—if you wish to see what this union may be for two human hearts, and for life,—then observe, not the wedded ones in their honeymoon, nor by the cradle of their first child; not at a time when novelty and hope yet throw a morning glory over the young and new-born world of home; but survey them, rather, in the more remote years of manhood, when they have proved the world and each other; when they have conquered many an error, and many a temptation, in order to become only the more united to each other; when labors and cares are theirs ”

“ Quiet little Jenny liked to make gardens by sticking flowers in the sand, but it particularly pleased him to send them all flying into the air, at the point of his boot. When the leaves were gay with autumn tints, she would bring her apron full and sit at grandmother’s feet weaving garlands for the mantel-piece; and it was Master Robin’s delight to pull them to pieces, and toss them hither and yon. It was wonderful how patiently the good grandmother put up with his roguish pranks. “O Robin, dear, don’t behave so,” she would say. “Be a good boy. Come! I want to see how fast you grow. ”

“ I said to myself that a most novel and peculiar sensation must be excited by having a whole past century before you, bodily present, compact and alive, in the century now passing; by holding, hand to hand, a man of the age of the antediluvians, over whose head so many entire generations of young mornings and old evenings have fled, and before whom one stands, in fact, as neither young nor old; to listen to a human spirit, outlandish, behind the time, almost mysteriously awful; sole survivor of the thousand gray, cold sleepers, coevals of his own remote, hoary age ”

“ And Willy, my eldest born, at nigh threescore and ten;
I knew them all as babies, and now they are elderly men.
For mine is a time of peace; it is not often I grieve;
I am oftener sitting at home in my father’s farm at eve:
192 And the neighbors come and laugh and gossip, and so do I;
I find myself often laughing at things that have long gone by.
To be sure the preacher says our sins should make us sad;
But mine is a time of peace, and there is grace to be had;
And God, not man, is the Judge of us all when life shall cease;
And in this Book, little Annie, the message is one of peace. ”

“ Select a man of my age, and of my heart, with my life-long want of highland scenery, and conduct him to the valley of the Rhine! Bring him to that long, attractive, sea-like river, flowing between vine-clad hills on either side, as between two regions of enchantment, reflecting only scenes of pleasure, creating islands for the sake of clasping them in its arms; let also a reflection of the setting sun glow upon its waters; and surely youth would again be mirrored in the old man, and that still ocean of infinity, which in the true and highest heaven permits us to look down. ”

“ Gottreich possessed a paradise, in which he labored as his father’s gardener. He was at once the wife, the brother, the friend of his parent; the all that is to be loved by man. Every Sunday brought him a new pleasure,—that of preaching a sermon before his father. If the eyes of the old man became moistened, or if he suddenly folded his hands in an attitude of prayer, that Sunday became the holiest of festivals. Many a festival has there been in that quiet little parsonage, the joyfulness of which no one understood and no one perceived. ”

“ D From Foregleams of Immortality.
Old age, in some of its aspects, is a most interesting and solemn mystery, though to the outward eye it is merely the gradual waning and extinction of existence. All the faculties fold themselves up to a long, last sleep. First, the senses begin to close, and lock in the soul from the outward world. The hearing is generally the first to fail, shutting off the mind from the tones of affection and of melody. The sight fails next; and the pictures of beauty, on the canvas spread round us morning and evening, become blurred. ”

“ May his calm and lofty form look down on thee in the last darkness, and show thee his Father.”
A low roll of thunder was heard from clouds which the storm had left. Gottreich continued to read:—
“Remember, in the last hour, how the heart of man can love. Canst thou forget the love wherewith one heart repays a thousand hearts, and the soul during a whole life is nourished and vivified from another soul? Even as the oak of a hundred years clings fast to the same spot, with its roots, and derives new strength, and sends forth new buds during its hundred springs?” ”

“ Monsieur Dubois! Get up! Pray get up immediately!” He hurried on his dressing-gown, and found Madeleine in the middle of his study, her eyes streaming with tears. The room where he had heaped up so many treasures, where he had spent so many hours of calm happiness, where he had the last evening enjoyed so much, was empty. The pile of folios, the rows of richly-bound manuscripts, with the velvet covers and silver clasps, his precious palimpsest, and even the bundles of musty vellum, had all disappeared. ”

“ He has been thoughtful all day, talking half to himself, chanting a bit of verse, humming a snatch of an old tune. He kissed his pet granddaughter more tenderly than common, before she went to bed. He takes out of his bosom a little locket; nobody ever sees it. Therein are two little twists of hair. As Grandfather looks at them, the outer twist of hair becomes a whole head of ambrosial curls. He remembers stolen interviews, meetings by moonlight. He remembers how sweet the evening star looked, and how he laid his hand on another’s shoulder, and said, “You are my evening star.” ”

“ The society of honorable, well-informed gentlemen, who meet a lady on the easy neutral ground of mutual esteem, is undoubtedly pleasant, but the time has passed when any one of them is the one necessary to her happiness. If she wishes to retain influence over mankind, she must do it by means different from those employed in youth. Even then, be her wit ever so sparkling, her influence ever so pure and true, she will often find her listener preferring bright eyes to intellectual conversation, and the satisfaction of his heart to the improvement of his mind. ”

“ But an angel moves round the couch to which suffering confines him; his feet are moved and enwrapped by soft white hands; the sick-chamber and the countenance of the old man grow bright before his orphan grandchild, Serena.
In the aged countenance and bowed form of the mother you see an old woman. But show her something beautiful, speak to her of something worthy of love, and her mien, her smile, beams from the eternal youth which dwells immortal in her sensitive spirit. ”

“ It is a trying crisis in life to feel that you have had your fair half at least of the ordinary term of years allotted to mortals; that you have no right to expect to be any handsomer, or stronger, or happier than you are now; that you have climbed to the summit of life, whence the next step must necessarily be decadence. The air may be as fresh, the view as grand, still you know that, slower or faster, you are going down hill. ”

“ In the familiarity of daily presence, the heart beats and glows silently; but in the hours of meeting and parting, the beautiful radiance of a long-nurtured flame reveals itself. It is on such occasions that man always most pleases me. I am then reminded of the glaciers, which beam forth in rosy-red transparency only at the rising and setting of the sun, while throughout the day they look gray and dark.
A golden mine of affection, of which the smallest glimmer is scarcely visible, lies buried in the breast until some magic word reveals it, and then man discovers his ancient treasure. ”

“ Fruit, before it is ripe, cannot be separated from the stalk without some degree of force; but when it is perfectly mature, it drops of itself: so the disunion of the soul and body is effected in the young by violence, but in the old it takes place by mere fulness and completion of years. This ripeness for death I perceive in myself with much satisfaction; and I look forward to my dissolution as to a secure haven, where I shall at length find a happy repose from the fatigues of a long voyage. ”

“ If there is no joy like the joy of youth, the rapture of a first love, the thrill of a first ambition, God’s great mercy has also granted that there is no anguish like youth’s pain; so total, so hopeless, blotting out earth and heaven, falling down upon the whole being like a stone. This never comes in after life; because the sufferer, if he or she have lived to any purpose at all, has learned that God never meant any human being to be crushed under any calamity, like a blind worm under a stone. ”

“ Nay, more than this, though some may shake their heads incredulously, it is a fact that worldly suffering has often not been disagreeable to me.40 It has weaned me from placing my trust in transitory things. It has shown me the degree of strength and self-reliance I could retain, even at that period of life when the passions reign. I am fully convinced that there is no evil in the world but sin. Nothing but consciousness of guilt spins a dark thread, which reaches through the web of all our days, even unto the grave. ”

“ In a letter to a friend, written when he was ninety-one, the old man rejoices over his vigor and friskiness, as a boy does over his exploits on the ice. He says: “The more I advance in years, the sounder and heartier I grow, to the amazement of the world. My memory, spirits, and understanding, and even my voice and my teeth, remain unimpaired. I employ eight hours a day in writing treatises with my own hand; and when I tell you that I write to be useful to mankind, you may easily conceive what pleasure I enjoy. I spend many hours daily in walking and singing. ”

“ Within it stood Mary and her cherub-boy, shining in transfigured light. The child stretched out his hands for an embrace, and Mary’s welcoming smile was more beautiful than it had ever been in the happy old time of roses and rainbows. “This is only one more of the magical transformations, my beloved,” she said. “It is as I told thee. The beautiful, mysterious road leads to something far more beautiful than itself. Come and see!” With tender joy he kissed her and the angel child. ”

“ When all the downward ties, which give to the decline of life a rightful comfort, and the interest in the new generation which brightens it with a perpetual hope, are to her either unknown, or indulged in chiefly on one side. Of course there are exceptions, where an aunt has been almost like a mother, and where a loving and lovable great-aunt is as important a personage as any grandmother. But, generally speaking, a single woman must make up her mind that the close of her days will be more or less solitary. ”