No matter who asked it;
but there were circumstances which saddened and awed me. I had no heart to
speak;--I faltered some miserable, perhaps petulant excuse, stole away,
and the first battle of life was lost. What remorse followed I need not
tell. Then and there; to the best of my knowledge, I first consciously
took Sin by the hand and turned my back on Duty. Time has led me to look
upon my offence more leniently; I do not believe it or any other childish
wrong is infinite, as some have pretended, but infinitely finite. Yet, oh
if I had but won that battle!
The great Destroyer, whose awful shadow it was that had silenced me, came
near me,--but never, so as to be distinctly seen and remembered, during my
tender years. There flits dimly before me the image of a little girl,
whose name even I have forgotten, a schoolmate, whom we missed one day,
and were told that she had died. But what death was I never had any very
distinct idea, until one day I climbed the low stone wall of the old
burial-ground and mingled with a group that were looking into a very deep,
long, narrow hole, dug down through the green sod, down through the brown
loam, down through the yellow gravel, and there at the bottom was an
oblong red box, and a still, sharp, white face of a young man seen through
an opening at one end of it.
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