Keepsake

“ Sits by the window which is open. She takes the cat and lifts it to the sill.
Betty. Smell the roses, Salem. How sweet they be. You are a wise pussy; tell me if William has the rose and the letter I sent him some days since. The post is so tardy these days. (Puts down cat; rises and goes to the mirror; pulls beads from their hiding-place under her kerchief; arranges them around her neck.) ’Tis a pity I cannot wear William’s keepsake openly. ”

“ Jane Austen's life, as it is told by her nephew, is beyond her work, which only contained one phase of that sweet and wise nature—the creative, observant, outward phase. For her home, for her sister, for her friends, she kept the depth and tenderness of her bright and gentle sympathy. She is described as busy with her neat and clever fingers sewing for the poor, working fanciful keepsakes for her friends. There is the cup and ball that she never failed to catch ”

“ But remember your promise and come back when the two months are over, or you may have cause to repent it, for if you do not come in good time you will find your faithful Beast dead. You will not need any chariot to bring you back. Only say good-by to all your brothers and sisters the night before you come away, and when you have gone to bed turn this ring round upon your finger and say firmly: ‘I wish to go back to my palace and see my Beast again.’ Good-night, Beauty. Fear nothing, sleep peacefully, and before long you shall see your father once more. ”

“ There are two thoughts in this verse which seem to me to be fraught with comfort and hope to us as we gather round this grave. There is the thought of rest. "They rest from their labors." Bethink you of the long life marked by the discipline of sorrow, and by those unwearied labors for others. ”

“ What more welcome to men, under personal afflictions, tiring duties, successions of sufferings, than rest? It is not our comfort only, but our stability. Our liveliness in all duties, our enduring tribulation, our honoring of God, the vigor of our love, thankfulness, and all our graces; yea, the very being of our religion and Christianity, depend on the believing serious thoughts of our rest. ”

“ Grant that I may die to all things that are in the world, and for Thy sake love to be contemned, and not known in this generation.
Grant to me above all things to desire to rest in Thee, and in Thee to have my heart at peace.
Thou art the true peace of the heart: Thou its only rest; out of Thee all things are full of trouble. ”

“ Whom have you spared? Did you spare those girls, the nieces of the kindly old man whom you married, or, because they were in your way, did not have them turned out of his house, their natural home? Did you spare the old man himself, when you saw him fretting against the step which you had compelled him to take? Whom have you spared, whom have you not over-ridden, in your reckless career of avarice and ambition? ”

“ May the present instance of mortality remind us of our approaching fate. May it draw our attention toward thee, the only refuge in time of need, that when the awful moment shall arrive in which we are about to leave this transitory scene, the enlivening prospect of thy mercy may dispel the gloom and fear of death; that after our departure hence in peace, and in thy favor, we may be received into thine everlasting kingdom, and there enjoy, in union with the souls of our departed friends, the just reward of a pious and virtuous life. ”

“ To recover his equanimity and composure, home must be to him a place of repose, of peace, of cheerfulness, of comfort; and his soul renews its strength again, and goes forth with fresh vigor to encounter the labor and troubles of life. ”

“ On the second occasion, though a cause on which I had staked life and fortune was defeated, time had brought tranquillity. I had the sense of having done my duty, and the long, peaceful evenings spent in thought and lighted up with the hope of reviving the cause if I escaped conviction, have left a memory gentle and pensive, but by no means unpleasant. ”

“ Can I bear to be separated from the only comfort I have left in the world, or can I be the cause of your leaving your father's house, and subjecting you to, perhaps, more afflictions than you already endure? ”

“ Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall. ”

“ I should continue, in silence and retirement, to lead the life which has been prescribed to me, and console myself for the loss of that society and those domestic comforts to which I have so long been a stranger, by the reflection that it has been deemed proper I should be afflicted without any fault of my own—and that your Royal Highness knows it. ”

“ If only one might shut up memories in a box, close the lid tight and turn the key upon them. If but the past could be blotted out, as are our sins by death, then, methinks, we would find comfort and compensation in this poor life once again. ”

“ Have not you thought, in hours when you were conscious of that shrinking of life into its smallest compass—that retirement of it from the confines of its territory, of which we have been thinking—that in that beggar's place you would keep up the fight no longer, but creep into some quiet corner, and there lay yourself down and sleep away into forgetfulness? ”

“ I am about to depart, even of my own will; dismiss then every rankling feeling; lay no more to your generous, wounded heart, a need, which is even more mine than yours; but let smiles and love attend your kinsman to the end, unalloyed by a deeper regret, than that fate wills it, and we must separate. ”

“ Sacrifice, solitary and secret, rich in pleasures only tasted in silence, which none can guess at, and no profane eye has ever seen; Sacrifice, jealous God and tyrant, God of strength and victory, exhaustless spring which, partaking of the very essence of all that exists, can by no expenditure be drained below its own level;—Sacrifice, there is the keynote of my life. ”

“ She stopped him with a gesture full of dignity and sweetness. "That life is gone forever,—it is thousands of miles and ages on ages away. It is a world more distant than the stars, and we are nearer to Heaven than to it.... ”

“ If you probe the human heart, you will find a want, and that want is rest. The cry of the world to day is, “Where can rest be found?” Why are theaters and places of amusement crowded at night? What is the secret of Sunday driving, of the saloons and brothels? Some think they are going to get it in pleasure, others think they are going to get it in wealth, and others in literature. They are seeking and finding no rest. ”

“ He wants to enjoy every comfort and to save every appearance, and all without making a scrap of a sacrifice. He expects others—me, for instance—to make all the sacrifices. Merci, much as I esteem him and much as I owe him! ”

“ It is the time-worn servitor, Etiquette, who draws the shades, who muffles the bell, who keeps the house quiet, who hushes voices and footsteps and sudden noises; who stands between well-meaning and importunate outsiders and the retirement of the bereaved; who decrees that the last rites shall be performed smoothly and with beauty and gravity, so that the poignancy of grief may in so far as possible be assuaged. ”

“ Shall we, the survivors, for yet a little while, walk in other companionship out into the day, and let the sunbeams settle on their heads as they used to do, or cover them with dust and ashes, and show to those in heaven that love for them is now best expressed by remorse and penitence? ”

“ I can only say that it has been expiated—such as it was, by twenty miserable years, and that the last expiation is even yet not come. Your father once said, and his words dashed from me the first hope which ever entered my mind concerning you, that he never would clasp the hand of a man who had taken the life of another. What would he say to a man who had taken a life, and concealed the fact for twenty years? I am that man. ”

“ There on the couch with Death some lie, in mournful beauty clad, so blanch, so still, so full of peace, until the resurrection comes, and the command goes forth: for thou, even thou, mighty spirit of beauty, thou sea, grand and august as thy being has been, must yield and give up all thy treasure. ”

“ What does he find?—let me ask you who went to your homes eager to find, in the welcome you had justly earned, full payment for four years' sacrifice—what does he find when, having followed the battle-stained cross against overwhelming odds, dreading death not half so much as surrender, he reaches the home he left so prosperous and beautiful? ”

“ From this redoubled attachment, a persuasion that I had but a short time to live, and profound security on my future state, arose an habitual and even pleasing serenity, which, calming every passion that extends our hopes and fears, made me enjoy without inquietude or concern the few days which I imagined remained for me. ”

“ No! the service for the dead which is most likely to remain a vital offering of the heart is not the ceremonial sorrow of specially consecrated times and seasons, but rather the simple longing in hours of joy that they could have been with us. ”

“ I accepted the offered pledge of amity in respectful silence.
“A young man,” continued the patriarch, “may possibly find it difficult to understand how the loss of a trinket can be a source of positive suffering to an old one, but—I am alluding to my lost ring—there are associations connected with it which—ahem! ”

“ Thus to their captive spoke, "Why sleep thy lays?
"Sing of thy treasures lost, thy splendor fled,
"And all thy triumphs in departed days!
"Know'st thou not, Harmony's resistless charm
"Can soothe each passion, and each grief disarm? ”

“ The pleasure of receiving a legacy must be generally mingled with pain, more or less intense, according to the nearness of relationship of the deceased, or the affection we have had for him: but, when a plump legacy drops into our laps from a totally unexpected quarter, and left by one for whom we did not care, or possibly whom we did not know,—the amount of pain must be very minute. ”

“ If it should be the fate of any of you to count the moments of captivity, in sorrow and in pain, pining in a dungeon's damps, may you find refuge in the recollection of the example you this day set to those who may be called to pass judgment on your lives! ”

“ In perilous times we live; for perilous times we are training our families. Oh! the blessedness of those precious promises which assure us that he will keep his own children to the end! Oh! the peace of being able to fall back upon those gracious words, “I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand!” ”

“ How few are the strong, mature years wherein to lay in store for death—the only store you can carry with you beyond the dreams of life, beyond the grave! You, from defects in your upbringing, have allowed your heart to go before your head ”

“ Then, you would give worlds to have the key to his heart, to be able to turn and guide him to your will; but if you lose that key now he is little, you may search for it carefully with tears some other day, and not find it. Old housekeepers have a proverb that one hour lost in the morning is never found all day—it has a significance in this case. ”

“ Then the courage which despair or resignation lends—that rise of the spirit to meet the inevitable which seldom fails even the lowest human being at the end—brought back strength sufficient. She turned the key, drew out the rusty hasp, and opened the casket of her dead past. ”

“ Without looking at him Honor went swiftly and silently out through the window and along the stoep. He remained quite still, looking after her, a feeling of finality, of flatness, weighing upon him, and a queer sense of loss, which was not after all loss because he had never possessed, never been near possession; until that morning the hope of proprietorship had not entered into his thoughts of her; passion had not before gripped him. ”

“ The Household lost their hope and soul's delight.
—But Providence, that gives and takes away
By his own law, is merciful and just;
Time wants not power to soften all regrets,
And prayer and thought can bring to worst distress
Due resignation. ”

“ Wouldst thou desire to live for ever? Wouldst thou only wish thy life to last for a thousand years? Remember the long hours of weariness in thy short career, thy frequent fainting under the burden. Thou wast aghast at the limited horizon of a short, uncertain and fugitive life: what wouldst thou have said if thou hadst seen an immeasurable, inevitably long future of weariness and sorrow stretch before thy eyes! ”

“ This wealth is of no avail to the travelling mind, save as a memorial of home, nor is its material such “as, buried once, men want dug up again.” A few happy words and phrases, promoted, for some accidental fitness, to the wider world of letters, are all that reach posterity; the rest pass into oblivion with the other perishables of the age. ”

“ If I, who, to others, seem marked out for even a partial possession of it,—distinguished by fortune, caressed by the world, brought into the circle of high life, and surrounded with splendour, seek without finding it, yet losing, scarce know how I miss it! ”

“ As at the last day we might be thrilled with the prospect of the grandeur of our destiny, so in these first days, our destiny appears grander. What would the days, what would our life, be worth, if some nights were not dark as pitch, of darkness tangible, that you can cut with a knife! ”

“ Come ye hither, therefore: here is the way by which one may go farther, here is rest by the grave, rest from the sorrow over loss, or rest in the sorrow of loss—through him who everlastingly re-unites those that are parted, and more firmly than nature unites parents with their children, and children with their parents—for, alas! ”

“ When I am lying with them, my boy, at rest after life’s long battle, you will not forget me, will you?—nor the traditions of the old place that will 330be yours after me? You will be a kind and a just master, and keep up the honor of the old name? You will not forget the widow or the fatherless children, nor suffer the aged to want for daily bread? ”