"Still a boy, I was thus too much a man in knowledge,--I did not
comprehend the sights I was compelled to see. I used to tear my
glasses away from my eyes, and, frightened at myself, run to escape my
own consciousness. Reaching the small house where we then lived, I
plunged into my grandmother's room and, throwing myself upon the
floor, buried my face in her lap; and sobbed myself to sleep with
premature grief. But when I awakened, and felt her cool hand upon my
hot forehead, and heard the low, sweet song, or the gentle story, or
the tenderly told parable from the Bible, with which she tried to
soothe me, I could not resist the mystic fascination that lured me, as
I lay in her lap, to steal a glance at her through the spectacles.
"Pictures of the Madonna have not her rare and pensive beauty. Upon
the tranquil little islands her life had been eventless, and all the
fine possibilities of her nature were like flowers that never bloomed.
Placid were all her years; yet I have read of no heroine, of no woman
great in sudden crises, that it did not seem to me she might have
been. The wife and widow of a man who loved his own home better than
the homes of others, I have yet heard of no queen, no belle, no
imperial beauty, whom in grace, and brilliancy, and persuasive
courtesy, she might not have surpassed.
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