University of Virginia Library

MY LITTLE BOY.

[ILLUSTRATION] [Description: 677EAF. Page 215. In-line Illustration. Image of an angel child, with a harp and wings, flying up through the clouds towares a glowing cross.]

THAT “Little Boy,” of whom it
was our delight and pride to
speak, is no more. His sweet
spirit has fled from the earth,
and left an aching void in our
heart, and an anguish which
will be hard to allay. The
music of his voice is stilled;
the mild beaming of his eyes is
quenched in the darkness of
death; his arms are no more
outstretched upon loving impulses,
nor his step speedy in
affection's errands; the happiness of his smile will no
more impart its blest contagion to our own spirit, nor
the home places be made again pleasant by his bright
presence.

We were loth that he should depart. There were a
thousand ties that bound him to us. We could not conceive
that a flower, so fair and full of promise, should
wither and die while within our grasp. We fancied that
we could hedge him round with our love, and that the
grim archer could not find access to our fold through the
diligence of our watchfulness. We had forgotten that
the brightest and fairest are oftenest the victims of inexorable

Death, and that the roseate robes of to-day's joy
may be usurped to-morrow by the sable drapery of affliction.

There was much to endear him to us. Perhaps no
more, however, than every child possesses to a parent.
He was precocious to an extraordinary degree, and his
little life was full of childish manliness that made everybody
love him who looked upon him. His kiss is still
warm upon our cheek, and his smile still bright in our
memory, replete with love and trust. We were sanguine
of a fruitful future for him, and we had associated him
with many schemes of happy usefulness in coming life,
and with foolish pride boasted of indications that promised
all we hoped. Alas! how dark it seems now, as we
recall the dear little fellow in his dreamless rest. He
was smiling as we laid him beneath the coffin-lid, as if
the spirit in parting had stamped its triumph, on the cold
lips, over the dominion of Death.

That “Little Boy” was our idol, and there were those
— well-meaning people too — who would expostulate,
and shake their heads gravely, and say that we loved him
too much; as if such a thing were possible, where a
being of such qualities was making constant drafts upon
our affection. It is our greatest consolation that we
loved him so well, — that there was no stint or limit to
the love we felt for him, — that his happiness and our
own were so promoted by that affection, that it was almost
like the pangs of death to relinquish him to the grave.

It seems almost a sin to weep over the young and
beautiful dead; but it must be a colder philosophy than
ours to repress tears when bending over the lifeless form

of a dear child. We may know that the pains of earth
are exchanged for the joys of heaven; we may admit the
selfishness of our woe, that would interpose itself between
the dead and their happiness; we may listen to and allow
the truth of gospel solaces, and cling to the hope of a
happy and endless meeting in regions beyond the grave;
but what can fill the void which their dreary absence
makes in the circle which they blessed, where every
association tends to recall them?

Thus it seems when the heart is first bereft, when the
sorrow is new, and we sit down in our lone chamber to
think of it and brood over it. But we know that affliction
must become softened by time, or it would be
unbearable. And there are many reflections that the
mind draws from its own stores to yield after-comfort.
Memory forgets nothing of the departed but the woe of
separation, and every association connected with them
becomes pleasant and joyous. We see them, “with their
angel plumage on;” we feel them around us upon viewless
wings, filling our minds with good influences and
blessed recollections; freed from the sorrows and temptations
and sins of earth, and, with a holier love, they are
still ministering to us.

It is one of the immunities of grief that it pour itself
out unchecked; and everybody who has a little boy like
this we have lost will readily excuse this fond and mournful
prolixity — this justifiable lamentation. But

`To talk of a man worth his millions giving a few
thousands of dollars in charity, is well enough,” said
old Roger; “he should be praised for it; but what is
his act compared with that of the poor woman who buys
a pint of oil from her own hard earnings, and carries it
in a broken-necked bottle to a sick neighbor, poorer than
herself, to cheer the gloomy hours of the night? What
is his act compared with hers, I should like to know?
Not that!”

And he snapped his fingers, and felt sustained in his
high estimate of the poor woman's small donation.