The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 26, December, 1859: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 26, December, 1859: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
account of the Lord's great goodness; for if we can't trust that, it's
all over with us all."
CHAPTER XLII.
LAST WORDS.
We know it is fashionable to drop the curtain over a newly married
pair, they recede from the altar; but we cannot but hope our readers
may by this time have enough of interest in our little history to wish
for a few words on the lot of the personages whose acquaintance they
have thereby made.
The conjectures of Miss Prissy in regard to the grand house which James
was to build for his bride were as speedily as possible realized. On a
beautiful elevation, a little out of the town of Newport, rose a fair
and stately mansion, whose windows overlooked the harbor, and whose
wide, cool rooms were adorned by thy constant presence of the sweet
face and form which has been the guiding star of our story. The fair
poetic maiden, the seeress, the saint, has passed into that appointed
shrine for woman, more holy than cloister, more saintly and pure than
church or altar,--_a Christian home_. Priestess, wife, and mother,
there she ministers daily in holy works of household peace, and by
faith and prayer and love redeems from grossness and earthliness the
common toils and wants of life.
The gentle guiding force that led James Marvyn from the maxims and
habits and ways of this world to the higher conception of an heroic and
Christ-like manhood was still ever present with him, gently touching
the springs of life, brooding peacefully with dovelike wings over his
soul, and he grew up under it noble in purpose and strong in spirit. He
was one of the most energetic and fearless supporters of the Doctor in
his life-long warfare against an inhumanity which was intrenched in all
the mercantile interests of the day, and which at last fell before the
force of conscience and moral appeal.
Candace in time transferred her allegiance to the growing family of her
young master and mistress, and predominated proudly in gorgeous raiment
with her butterfly turban over a rising race of young Marvyns. All the
care not needed by them was bestowed upon the somewhat querulous old
age of Cato, whose never-failing cough furnished occupation for all her
spare hours and thought.
As for our friend the Doctor, we trust our readers will appreciate the
magnanimity with which he proved a real and disinterested love, in a
point where so many men experience only the graspings of a selfish one.
A mind so severely trained as his had been brings to a great crisis,
involving severe self-denial, an amount of reserved moral force quite
inexplicable to those less habituated to self-control. He was like a
warrior whose sleep even was in armor, always ready to be roused to the
conflict.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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