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318 |
THE BATTLE OF LIFE. |
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" That's something, to be sure," retorted Aunt Martha, "in such a farce as——"
"No, pray don't," said the Doctor penitently.
" Well, I won't," replied Aunt Martha. " But I consider myself ill-used. I don't know what's to become of me without my Marion, after we have lived together half-a-dozen years."
"You must come and live here, I suppose," replied the Doctor. " We shan't quarrel now, Martha."
" Or get married, Aunt," said Alfred.
"Indeed," returned the old lady, "I think it might be a good speculation if I were to set my cap at Michael Warden, who, I hear, is come home much the better for his absence, in all respects. But as I knew him when he was a boy, and I was not a very young woman then, perhaps he mightn't respond. So I'll make up my mind to go and live with Marion, when she marries, and until then (it will not be very long, I dare say) to live alone. What do you say, Brother?"
" I've a great mind to say it's a ridiculous world altogether, and there's nothing serious in it," observed the poor old Doctor.
" You might take twenty affidavits of it if you chose, Anthony," said his sister; " but nobody would believe you with such eyes as those."
" It's a world full of hearts," said the Doctor; hugging his younger daughter, and bending across her to hug Grace—for he couldn't separate the sisters; " and a serious world, with all its folly—even with mine, which was enough to have swamped the whole globe; and a world on which the sun never rises, but it looks upon a thousand bloodless battles that are some set-off against the miseries and wickedness of Battle-Fields ; and a world we need be careful how we libel, Heaven forgive us, for it is a world of sacred mysteries, and its Creator only knows what lies beneath the surface of His lightest image ! "
You would not be the better pleased with my rude pen, if it dissected and laid open to your view the transports of this family, long severed and now reunited. Therefore, I will not follow the poor Doctor through his humbled recollection of the sorrow he had had, when Marion was lost to him; nor will I tell how serious he had found that world to be, in which some love deep-anchored, is the portion of all human creatures; nor how such a trifle as the absence of one little unit in the great absurd account, had stricken him to the ground. Nor how, in compassion for his distress, his .sister had, long ago, revealed the truth to him by slow degrees; and brought him to the knowledge of the heart of his self-banished daughter, and to that daughter's side. |
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