FORGIVING NOT FORGETTING.
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ou have wronged me—I forgive you—but I cannot forget," was Mrs. Flintwell's reply to Miss Abbie Lightly, who came to her a suppliant for pardon.
Abbie was thoughtless, impulsive, unsettled in character. All that was evil within her floated up to the surface, bubbling and babbling, and readily stimulated into action. But there was a golden vein of virtue lying beneath the froth and foam of her effervescent nature. When the passing excitement, which prompted light speech and rash act, subsided; when she sat in the calm seclusion of her own chamber, the good angel, Reflection, softly entered in, and, with sad visage, raised a magic mirror before her eyes, and showed her inconsequent deeds flitting by in long procession, and sorrowfully rehearsed her short-comings and their sequence. And Abbie gazed upon that reproachful presentment, and listened to that gentle, regretful tone, and was moved to contrition! Better still, she rose up courageously and went to the one against whom she had sinned. Though her spirit
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