The things we do!

It is an old
saying, that we forget nothing; as people in fever begin suddenly to talk
the language of their infancy we are stricken by memory sometimes, and
old affections rush back on us as vivid as in the time when they were our
daily talk, when their presence gladdened our eyes, when their accents
thrilled in our ears, when with passionate tears and grief we flung
ourselves upon their hopeless corpses. Parting is death, at least as far
as life is concerned. A passion comes to an end; it is carried off in a
coffin, or weeping in a post-chaise; it drops out of life one way or
other, and the earthclods close over it, and we see it no more. But it
has been part of our souls, and it is eternal. Does a mother not love her
dead infant? a man his lost mistress? with the fond wife nestling at his
side,--yes, with twenty children smiling round her knee. No doubt, as the
old soldier held the girl's hand in his, the little talisman led him back
to Hades, and he saw Leonora.----
"How do you do, uncle?" say girls Nos.


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