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precious freight of their hopes.
The experience of immemorial time had taught us formerly to count our
enjoyments by years, and extend our prospect of life through a lengthened
period of progression and decay; the long road threaded a vast labyrinth,
and the Valley of the Shadow of Death, in which it terminated, was hid by
intervening objects. But an earthquake had changed the scene--under our
very feet the earth yawned--deep and precipitous the gulph below opened
to receive us, while the hours charioted us towards the chasm. But it was
winter now, and months must elapse before we are hurled from our security.
We became ephemera, to whom the interval between the rising and setting sun
was as a long drawn year of common time. We should never see our children
ripen into maturity, nor behold their downy cheeks roughen, their blithe
hearts subdued by passion or care; but we had them now--they lived, and
we lived--what more could we desire? With such schooling did my poor
Idris try to hush thronging fears, and in some measure succeeded. It was
not as in summer-time, when each hour might bring the dreaded fate--until
summer, we felt sure; and this certainty, short lived as it must be, yet
for awhile satisfied her maternal tenderness. I know not how to express or
communicate the sense of concentrated, intense, though evanescent
transport, that imparadized us in the present hour. Our joys were dearer
because we saw their end; they were keener because we felt, to its fullest
extent, their value; they were purer because their essence was sympathy--
as a meteor is brighter than a star, did the felicity of this winter
contain in itself the extracted delights of a long, long life.
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