You will make a better Lord Kew than I have been,
George. God bless you." George flung himself down with sobs by his
brother's bedside, and swore Frank had always been the best fellow, the
best brother, the kindest heart, the warmest friend in the world. Love--
prayer--repentance, thus met over the young man's bed. Anxious and humble
hearts, his own the least anxious and the most humble, awaited the dread
award of life or death; and the world, and its ambition and vanities,
were shut out from the darkened chamber where the awful issue was being
tried.
Our history has had little to do with characters resembling this lady. It
is of the world, and things pertaining to it. Things beyond it, as the
writer imagines, scarcely belong to the novelist's province. Who is he,
that he should assume the divine's office; or turn his desk into a
preacher's pulpit? In that career of pleasure, of idleness, of crime we
might call it (but that the chronicler of worldly matters had best be
chary of applying hard names to acts which young men are doing in the
world every day), the gentle widowed lady, mother of Lord Kew, could but
keep aloof, deploring the course upon which her dear young prodigal had
entered; and praying with that saintly love, those pure supplications,
with which good mothers follow their children, for her boy's repentance
and return.
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