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that we leave to confide in accustomed feelings which like mother-earth
support us, and cling to some vain imagination or deceitful hope, which
will soon be buried in the ruins occasioned by the final shock. I have
called that period a fortnight, which we passed watching the changes of the
sweet child's malady--and such it might have been--at night, we
wondered to find another day gone, while each particular hour seemed
endless. Day and night were exchanged for one another uncounted; we slept
hardly at all, nor did we even quit his room, except when a pang of grief
seized us, and we retired from each other for a short period to conceal our
sobs and tears. We endeavoured in vain to abstract Clara from this
deplorable scene. She sat, hour after hour, looking at him, now softly
arranging his pillow, and, while he had power to swallow, administered his
drink. At length the moment of his death came: the blood paused in its flow
-
-his eyes opened, and then closed again: without convulsion or sigh, the
frail tenement was left vacant of its spiritual inhabitant.
I have heard that the sight of the dead has confirmed materialists in their
belief. I ever felt otherwise. Was that my child--that moveless decaying
inanimation? My child was enraptured by my caresses; his dear voice
cloathed with meaning articulations his thoughts, otherwise inaccessible;
his smile was a ray of the soul, and the same soul sat upon its throne in
his eyes. I turn from this mockery of what he was. Take, O earth, thy debt!
freely and for ever I consign to thee the garb thou didst afford. But thou,
sweet child, amiable and beloved boy, either thy spirit has sought a fitter
dwelling, or, shrined in my heart, thou livest while it lives.
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