Have not
ribbons, cast-off flowers, soiled bits of gauze, trivial, trashy
fragments of millinery, sometimes had an awful meaning, a deadly power,
when they belonged to one who should wear them no more, and whose
beautiful form, frail and crushed as they, is a hidden and a vanished
thing for all time? For so sacred and individual is a human being, that,
of all the million-peopled earth, no one form ever restores another.
The mould of each mortal type is broken at the grave; and never, never,
though you look through all the faces on earth, shall the exact form you
mourn ever meet your eyes again! You are living your daily life among
trifles that one death-stroke may make relics. One false step, one
luckless accident, an obstacle on the track of a train, the tangling of
the cord in shifting a sail, and the penknife, the pen, the papers, the
trivial articles of dress and clothing, which to-day you toss idly and
jestingly from hand to hand, may become dread memorials of that awful
tragedy whose deep abyss ever underlies our common life.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE PARTY.
Well, let us proceed to tell how the eventful evening drew on,--how
Mary, by Miss Prissy's care, stood at last in a long-waisted gown
flowered with rose-buds and violets, opening in front to display a white
satin skirt trimmed with lace and flowers,--how her little feet were
put into high-heeled shoes, and a little jaunty cap with a wreath of
moss-rose-buds was fastened over her shining hair,--and how Miss Prissy,
delighted, turned her round and round, and then declared that she must
go and get the Doctor to look at her.
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