Can you take down Seneca now, and coolly blow the dust from the leaf-tops? Can you crimp your lip with Voltaire? Can you smoke idly, your feet dangling with the ivies, your thoughts all waving fancies upon a church-yard wall—a wall that borders the grave of your boy? Can you amuse yourself by turning stinging Martial into rhyme? Can you pat your dog, and seeing him wakeful and kind, say, “It is enough?” Can you sneer at calumny, and sit by your fire dozing? Blessed, thought I again, is the man who escapes such trial as will measure the limit of patience and the limit of courage! But the trial comes—colder and colder were growing the embers. That wife, over whom your love broods, is fading. Not beauty fading—that, now that your heart is wrapped in her being, would be nothing. She sees with quick eye your dawning apprehension, and she tries hard to make that step of hers elastic. Your trials and your loves together have centered your affections. They are not now as when you were a lone man, wide-spread and superficial. They have caught from domestic attachments a finer tone and touch. They cannot shoot out tendrils into barren world-soil and suck up thence strengthening nutriment. They have grown under the forcing-glass of home-roof, they will not now bear exposure. You do not now look men in the face as if a heart-bond was linking you—as if a community of feeling lay between. There is a heart-bond that absorbs all others; there is a community that monopolizes your feeling. When the heart lay wide open, before it had grown upon, and closed around particular objects, it could take strength and cheer from a hundred connections that now seem colder than ice. And now those particular objects—alas for you!—are failing. What anxiety pursues you! How you struggle to fancy—there is no danger; how she struggles to persuade you—there is no danger! How it grates now on your ear—the toil and turmoil of the city! It was music when you were alone; it was pleasant even, when from the din you were elaborating comforts for the cherished objects—when you had such sweet escape as evening drew on. Now it maddens you to see the world careless while you are steeped in care. They hustle you in the street; they smile at you across the table; they bow carelessly over the way; they do not know what canker is at your heart. The undertaker comes with his bill for the dead boy’s funeral. He knows your grief; he is respectful. You bless him in your soul. You wish the laughing street-goers were all undertakers. Your eye follows the physician as he leaves your house: is he wise, you ask yourself; is he prudent? Is he the best? Did he never fail—is he never forgetful? And now the hand that touches yours, is it no thinner—no whiter than yesterday? Sunny days come when she revives; color comes back; she breathes freer; she picks flowers; she meets you with a smile. Hope lives again.