46
THE LADY'S
was the peculiar regard of her fond parents, and her older brothers -the pride of their hearts. For, whether from partiality I know not, Anna was thought to give high intellectual promise. Certainly she was of a lovely disposition. She loved her brothers ardently- she showed her love by every little means in her power : they, in turn, never would cross her will- they would yield to her slightest wishes ; in short, her affection was by no means unrequited. Oh, what must be that brother's heart, who can trifle with the feelings of a loving sister, pleased with the society of any other young lady rather than hers ! Truly, I have thought of such, you are unworthy of the felicity in your power. Had I the envied possession-but who knows the deceitfulness of the heart ? Perhaps, though now grieving the deprivation, I might have abused the enjoyment of the blessing.
But to return-keen must have been the dart which pierced those brothers' hearts who had sustained such a loss. The wound it caused would refuse to be healed. They have no other sister to fill the place of her of whom they have been deprived. Oft have I heard them in after years speak of their sister till tears would roll profusely down their cheeks. She was a most dutiful child, yielding implicitly to her parents, and participating in turn largely both in a father's and in a mother's love. For three years, likewise, she had been the subject of frequent and violent illness. A distress in her head had sometime previous to her death deprived her of sight. The solicitude occasioned by such afflictions naturally draws closer the ties which bind a child to the parent's heart. But in her were blasted darling hopes. Parents are inclined to look to a daughter as destined to be the solace of their old age. The son may-amid the exciting scenes of business -of the political world, be forgetful of his filial duties ; but in the daughter such conduct is so unfrequent, and withal so incongruous, that we are apt to regard her who exhibits it as a monster rather than a human being. But now the bud of promise had been plucked by the ruthless hand of the destroyer, just as it began to open and develop its hidden beauties. My father was a man peculiarly " made for the stern hour of strife ;" but this one grief he ever indulged- it could not be soothed. And oh how often have I heard my mother relate, with swelling bosom, narratives of her child ; delighting to show the little products of her labor ; to repeat the sentiments which she uttered-far above her age, the passages of poetry of which she was fond. Think you, reader, that I did not participate in this common grief? Oh do not thus wrong my young feelings. Iloved my sister ; I was loved by her. You have doubtless noticed the affection of a sister for her younger brothers. I was her only younger brother, and enjoyed her love undivided. I had seemingly no other companion. I was ever with her- after she was de-
prived of sight I led her about the neighborhood,—yes, I had sorrow. Too young, to be sure, for that sentimentalism in the indulgence of which sorrow often vanishes into mere empty affectation ; mine was the pure-the ingenuous sorrow of the heart. Some years after my mother gave me the following narrative. The little girls of the neighborhood used to visit my sister often, and construct small play-houses for her diversion. A few days before her death quite a company were assembled-the circumstance I remember well, but not the time- and had constructed several. The day succeeding her burial, after having lain some time pensive and silent, on a bed, with my eyes turned toward the door opening into the yard where they were standing, I at length rose and said, " Mother, now sister is dead, I shall not want any thing more of the playhouses. I have a mind to take them down if you are willing, mother. ". Having obtained her assent, I went about it and piled up all the materials of which they were composed, with much care. But still of my sisters I can have only an imperfect recollection. A single incident in the life of the younger, a dozen or more in that of the elder, the funeral ceremonies of each, is all I remember. Nor do I recollect the occurrence of a single incident for more than a year after their death. The intensity of my infant feelings is, perhaps, the only reason why memory clings, with so tenacious a grasp, to the circumstances connected with them. I gradually awoke into life, and these seem as the disordered visions of some frightful dream. Now I am surrounded by reality. I am in a grave-yard, where the dead have been buried,-where lie many with whom I once associated . Here reposes the dust of my sisters. For twenty summers the wild flower has bloomed upon their peaceful graves ; and I have become transformed from the vacant, thoughtless child , into the sober, reflecting man- I am surrounded, I say, with reality. Mine is a real sorrow. Stoicism might despise and forbid the indulgence of grief for the loss of friends, from whom we never should have derived benefit had their lives been spared to us ; but me it will admit to have sustained a real loss. And oh, if the mingling of any selfish with other feelings be ever tolerable, it will be pardoned in me at present on this occasion ! Were the stroke which deprived me at once, as it were, of my only sisters, a fatality I could not be reconciled. But it is from the hand of Providence, " Who sueth not as man sueth ;" " Who does all things well ;" and I should " be still and know that he is God." Yet surely never was boy more blessed than I should have been if my sisters had remained alive. I can fancy to myself a beautiful picture of childhood and youth ; Anna, eight years older than myself, would have joined a sister's love to something like maternal care. Her eye would have been ever over me ; and for the supervi-
