In accordance with the god’s decree, no statue was erected, no poem was composed, and no entry was made in the city records. But tradition did not forget that the saviour of the city was he who survived in the great image on which the name of the god was inscribed.
AN aged tree, whose companions had gone, having still a little sap in its bark and a few leaves which grew therefrom, prayed it might see yet another spring. Its prayer was granted: and spring came, but the old tree had no leaves save one or two near the ground, and a great fungus fixed itself on its trunk. It had a dull life in its roots, but not enough to know that its moss and fungus were not foliage. It stood there, an unlovely mass of decay, when the young trees were all bursting. “That rotten thing,” said the master, “ought to have been cut down long ago.”
“CONSCIENCE,” said I, “her conscience would have told her.”
“Yes,” said my father. “The strongest amongst the many objections to the Roman Catholic doctrine of confession is that it weakens our dependence on the conscience. If we seek for an external command to do what ought to be done in obedience to that inward monitor, whose voice is always clear if we will but listen, its authority will gradually be lost, and in the end it will cease to speak.”
“Conscience,” said my grandmother musingly (turning to my father). “You will remember Phyllis Eyre? She was one of my best friends, and it is now two years since she died, unmarried. She was once governess to the children of Sir Robert Walsh, but remained in the house as companion to Lady Walsh long after her pupils had grown up. She was, in fact, more than a companion, for Lady Walsh trusted her and loved her. She was by birth a lady; she had been well educated, and, like her mistress, she was devoutly and evangelically pious. She was also very handsome, and this you may well believe, for, as you know, she was handsome as an old woman, stately and erect, with beautiful, undimmed eyes. When Evelina Walsh, the eldest daughter, was about one and twenty, Charles Fysshe, the young heir to the Fysshe property, came to stay with her brother, and Phyllis soon discovered, or thought she discovered, that he was in love with Evelina. He seemed to court her society, and paid her attentions which could be explained on one hypothesis only. Phyllis was delighted, for the match in every way was most suitable, and must gladden the hearts of Evelina’s parents. The young man would one day be the possessor of twenty thousand acres; he had already taken a position in the county, and his soul was believed to be touched with Divine grace. Evelina certainly was in love with him, and Phyllis was not backward in urging his claims. She congratulated herself, and with justice, that if the marriage should ever take place, it would be acknowledged that she had had a hand in it. It might even be doubted whether Evelina, without Phyllis’s approval, would have permitted herself to indulge her passion, for she was by nature diffident, and so beset with reasons for and against when she had to make up her mind on any important matter, that a decision was always most difficult to her.