6. Did you ever know a family, or, rather, the relics of a family, where
there was just a decrepit old father and a lone daughter left to nurse
him through his second childhood? All his other children are either
married or dead; but both marriage and death have spared Miss Much-afraid
to watch over the dotage-days of Mr. Despondency; till one summer
afternoon the old man fell asleep in his chair to waken where old men are
for ever young. And in a day or two there were two new graves side by
side in the old churchyard. Even death could not divide this old father
and his trusty child. And so when the time was come for them to depart,
they went down together to the brink of the river. The last words of Mr.
Despondency were, "Farewell night and welcome day." His daughter went
through the river singing, but none could understand what it was she
said. Fore-fancy that, all you godly old men, with a daughter who has
made a husband and children to herself of her old father.
7. As I hear Old Honest shouting "Grace reigns!" I always remember what
a lady told me about a saying of her poor Irish scullery-girl. The
mistress and the servant were reading George Eliot's Life together in the
kitchen, and when they came to her deathbed, on the pillow of which
Thomas A'Kempis lay open, "Mem," said the girl, "I used to read that old
book in the convent; but it is a better book to live upon than to die
upon." Now, that was exactly Old Honest's mind. He lived upon one book,
and then he died upon another. He lived according to the commandments of
God, but he died according to the comforts of the Gospel. Now, we read
in his history how that the river at that time overflowed its banks in
some places. But Mr. Honest had in his lifetime spoken to one
Good-conscience to meet him at the river, the which he also did, and lent
him his hand, and so helped him over. All the same, the last words of
Mr. Honest still were, "Grace reigns!" And so he left the world. Fore-
fancy whether or no you are making, as one has said, "an assignation with
terror" at that same river-side.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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