Let us follow on further in her path, where polished doors are fastened against the intruding world. It is a home of fashion, but from the parlor windows no token of life are seen. The blinds are closed—the dwelling looks uninhabited. But there _is_ life within, ay, and death, too! Around the silver door-knob, and circling the door-bell handle, where the hands of the wealthy and gay have so often rested, (but very rarely those of the poor and needy,) there is wound a scarf of crape, and mournfully the death-token flutters in the morning air. For two days scarcely a form has entered those doors; the sufferers within, however much they may have rejoiced in display in former days, have no wish that there may be spectators to their sorrow.
Yet there is one—a not often heeded guest, though a seldom failing one—who comes to them now they cannot shut her out; she longs to utter some soothing and consoling word. She penetrates to the very scene of their grief. She looks into the silent chamber where the father and mother are weeping over their only child—the child of whom they had made an idol, whom God, who hath said “thou shalt have _no_ gods but me,” hath taken away from them. They have with their own hands laid their child in her coffin, ere long they will see her borne away from them forever; so it is with unutterable sorrow they stand beside that little one and gaze on her pale face. The blinds are closed, and the curtains partly drawn, but through an open shutter the Sunlight enters the darkened room, and drawing near to the bereaved parents, she lays her hand, oh, so gently on the forehead of the child!
The clustering curls which fall upon that brow seem almost illuminate beneath the pressure of that hand—and the mother’s tears fall faster as she looks on the beautiful little one that will be so soon hidden away from the pleasant day-light and the hopes of life. But as the father looks, his sorrow is abated, his voice is lifted up, there is hope in its tone, he says, “Mary, let us weep no longer over our child, her spirit has already won a brighter crown than that the sunlight lays upon her head.”
And the mother’s grief becomes less wild, and humble is the voice with which she makes answer,