You will find a very long
"aside" to you almost as soon as you begin to read. And so, dear young
friend, fall to at once, taking such things as I have provided for you;
and if you turn them, by the aid of your powerful imagination, into a fair
banquet, why, then, peace be with you, and a summer by the still waters of
some quiet river, or by some yellow beach, where, as my friend, the
Professor, says, you can sit with Nature's wrist in your hand and count
her ocean-pulses.]
I should like to make a few intimate revelations relating especially to my
early life, if I thought you would like to hear them.
[The schoolmistress turned a little in
her chair, and sat with her face directed partly towards me.--Half-
mourning now;--purple ribbon. That breastpin she wears has _gray_ hair in
it; her mother's, no doubt;--I remember our landlady's daughter telling
me, soon after the school-mistress came to board with us, that she had
lately "buried a payrent." That's what made her look so pale,--kept the
poor sick thing alive with her own blood. Ah! long illness is the real
vampyrism; think of living a year or two after one is dead, by sucking the
life-blood out of a frail young creature at one's bedside!--Well, souls
grow white, as well as cheeks, in these holy duties; one that goes in a
nurse may come out an angel.
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