But what
other or fitter messenger than himself could bear it to its
destination? It was for this that he had been guided to it.
For years he had regarded the finding of his father as the first
duty of his manhood: it was as if his mother had now given her
sanction to the quest, with this letter to carry to the husband who,
however he might have erred, was yet dear to her. He replaced it in
the box, but the box no more on the forsaken shelf with its dreary
barricade of soulless records. He carried it with him, and laid it
in the bottom of his box, which henceforth he kept carefully locked:
there lay as it were the pledge of his father's salvation, and his
mother's redemption from an eternal grief.
He turned to his equation: it had cleared itself up; he worked it
out in five minutes. Betty came to tell him that the dinner was
ready, and he went down, peaceful and hopeful, to his grandmother.
While at home he never worked in the evenings: it was bad enough to
have to do so at college. Hence nature had a chance with him again.
Blessings on the wintry blasts that broke into the first youth of
Summer! They made him feel what summer was! Blessings on the
cheerless days of rain, and even of sleet and hail, that would shove
the reluctant year back into January. The fair face of Spring, with
her tears dropping upon her quenchless smiles, peeped in suppressed
triumph from behind the growing corn and the budding sallows on the
river-bank.
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