God pity them both! and pity us all For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: "It might have been!" Ah well! for us all some sweet hope lies And, in the hereafter, angels may WHITTIER. THE MIST OVER THE VALLEY. Mas Ꮇ wife was dead. I had never loved her-I may as well speak frankly-never loved her; and yet, for her sake, I cast away the one priceless pearl of my life. I think every human existence has its moment of fate-its moment when the golden apple of the Hesperides hangs ready upon the bough-how is it that so few of us are wise enough to pluck it? The decision of a single hour may open for us the gate of the enchanted gardens, where are flowers, and sunshine, and air purer than any breezes of earth; or it may condemn us, Tantalus-like, to reach evermore after some far-off, unattainable good-make us slaves of the lamp forever and forever. And yet we seek no counsel. We stretch forth our hands and grasp blindly at the future, forgetting that we have only ourselves to blame when we draw them back pierced sorely with thorns. My life, like all others, had its hour of destiny; and it is of that hour, its perils, its temptations, its sin, that I am about to tell you. I had known Bertha Payson from my infancy. She was only a year younger than I. I can remember her face, far away back among the misty visions of my boyhood. It looked then, as it does now, pure and pale, yet proud. Her eyes were calm as a full lake underneath the summer moon, deep as the sea-a clear, untroubled gray. Her hair was soft, and smooth, and dark. She wore it plainly banded away from her large, thoughtful forehead. The pure yet healthful white of her complexion contrasted only with her eyes, her hair, her clearly-defined, arching brows, and one line of red marking the thin, flexible lips. It was relieved by no other trace of color, even in the cheeks. I have not painted for you a beauty, and yet I think now that Bertha Payson had the noblest female face my eyes ever rested on. Her figure was tall, and lithe, and slender; her voice clear, low, and musical. From my earliest boyhood she had seemed to me like some guardian saint, pure enough for worship, but, for a long time I had thought, not warm enough for love. She was twenty before I began to understand her better. I had just graduated at Harvard, and I came home-perhaps a little less dogmatic and conceited. than the majority of newly-fledged A.B.'s-full of lofty aspirations, generous purposes, and romantic dreams. I was prepared to fall in love, but I never thought of loving quiet Bertha Payson, my next neighbor's daughter. The ideal lady of my fancy was far prettier-a dainty creature, with the golden hair and starry eyes of Tennyson's dream-an "Airy, fairy Lilian, Flitting, fairy Lilian." And yet, in the mean time, I looked forward with pleasure to Bertha's companionship. To talk with her always brought out "the most of heaven I had in me." There was nothing in art or nature so glorious that it did not take new glory when the glances of her eyes kindled over it. My mind never scaled any |