It is that hour of day's decline when the turbulent roar from the city's
busy mart is hushed into a lazy hum, when a peaceful, quiet calm
breathes through the atmosphere and settles on the noisy earth, as if
all things were hushed into tranquil silence at thought of the coming
twilight's holy hour. The sun's red, slanting rays fall on the dusty
pavement in front of that gloomy, stately mansion which Harry calls his
home, enter a richly furnished room where the blinds are thrown open and
the curtains looped back, and with their fervent glow rest
compassionately upon a drooping female figure, upon a bent head bowed in
shame, a head still young, whose wealth of rich black tresses passion
and remorse have already marked with gray. Sin-stricken, woe-stricken,
and remorseful, feeling how inefficient is even her mother's love, how
powerless every earthly consideration to hold her back from ruin;
stretching out palsied hands to Heaven for help; racked by the fierce
fires of repentance, her tortured soul corroded by remorse, she mourns
passionately but unavailingly.
Oh! there are hours like this in the hidden history of every fallen and
degraded son of Adam, when the scales are removed from the spiritual
eyes, and the sin-stained soul shiveringly beholds the depth to which it
has fallen, and shrinks back appalled at the sight; when the demon has
departed for a season, and evil thoughts and evil influences are cast
out, and, feeling their power returning with repentance, angels come to
minister unto the sorrowing one. Gentle guardians are there, who have
watched it all its life through, striven with all the means that lie
within the grasp of a spirit's power to stay it on its downward course
and bring the lost soul back. Ah! 'Love's labor lost.' Ineffectual these
oft-repeated efforts _may_ be, ineffectual through all time they
doubtless will be; but who shall say in the 'land of the undying' that
the work of ministering love shall not continue? What man is that, that
in an hour like this can look upon his brother, prostrate in spirit,
racked with remorse, no matter how vile and polluted, and can say
anguish like this shall be that soul's undying portion in the long
hereafter; that God's justice requires infinite punishment for a finite
crime; that, when freed from its earthly body, the ears of the
All-Compassionate shut out that soul's despairing cry for pardon? Who
shall limit infinite mercy? Who shall set bounds to Divine compassion,
or think that, toiling painfully and slowly up the endless heights of
progression, there shall not be a time away onward in the solemn future,
hidden in the dim mists of ages yet to come, when that soul shall be
cleansed from its pollution, freed from its mourning, sin entirely cast
out, and God shall be all and in all?
The light breeze, as it sways the loose heavy tresses, wafts to her ear
a strain of distant music. All the drowsy afternoon it has been playing,
lost almost entirely at first in the busy hum of the streets and in the
long lull of the lazy wind--a strain only caught at rare intervals when
the breeze is strong enough to bear it to her. It has been slowly
approaching as the hours creep on, advancing a few steps at a time.
Ballads and simple ditties, dances, waltzes, grand old marches! with
that unaccountable attraction for trifles which the mind often
experiences in its hours of suffering, mechanically, one after another,
she has traced them all. Now the varied tones cease to pervade the
atmosphere, and there is a long resting pause. When the music begins
again, it is on the pavement, almost beneath the window, and the old
musician, perhaps unconsciously wrought upon by the silent influence of
the hour, has merged from the gay to the pathetic, and plays only sad
little pieces in the minor key. Presently from the multitude of sweet
sounds there arises on the air a song lower and sadder than the
others--a strange, pathetic melody, falling on the ear like a low,
plaintive wail, broken by keen throbs of agony: her whole nature beats
in responsive echo. O God! gone so far down the dreary road which has
darkly led her from that time of purity and peace when that song was
nightly sung to her; after so many weary years of sin and suffering, to
hear those notes again! It is but a simple thing which has the power so
to move her, a mere nothing; half dirge, half hymn, familiar to her
long-forgotten childhood, once sung by her mother as a cradle song! With
her wretched face buried in her hands, she hears it, and clearly the
past rises before her: her childhood in its innocence; her girlhood in
its purity; her womanhood, her motherhood in its degradation! All the
holier part of what was once herself; all that was true and noble,
womanly and pure, from the deep waters of oblivion to which that damning
appetite has consigned them, rise to haunt her now, pale, wan, and
spectre-like. Oh! to sit down, side by side with her former self; to see
herself as she used to be before the tempter crept into the Eden of her
heart; to look despairingly up to the height whence she had fallen, so
wrecked in moral strength that she had not the power to retrace a single
step! Peace departed, virtue lost, health undermined, affection
squandered, ruthlessly murdering the peace of one whose life through all
the time of its sad earth-sojourning is linked with hers; cursing the
home she should have blessed and brightened, making of that fair garden,
wherein sweet domestic graces should have bloomed and blossomed as the
rose, but a desolate and barren waste, knowing that hearts, little
hearts, that had drawn their life-beat from her own, had starved and
sickened for the love which is their rightful food;--with senses bleared
and deadened, she had heard them piteously wailing but for a morsel of
that bread of life without which even the footsteps of the self-reliant,
the strong and brave of heart, faint and falter by the way, and she had
cruelly denied them that precious nutriment; she had given them life,
but had robbed them of all that makes life endurable. Life's duties
unfulfilled, life's high and holy aims trampled under the foot of
sensual indulgence, living to blight instead of to bless! O woman, wife,
and mother, thy life when lived aright a crucifixion of the flesh, a
sublime self-sacrifice--not for thee the pleasures of sense and time,
not for thee may peal earth's songs of triumph! Fainting oft beneath the
burden of the cross, we trace thy way by bloody footprints, suffering as
a saint;--falling from thy estate, how terrible will be thy retribution
as a sinner!
Hark! There is the patter of little feet ascending the staircase, coming
down the long upper hall. To the repentant mother's ears what music so
sweet as that? She listens breathlessly. Was it thought of her that had
impelled them thither? Would they approach her room? Since she had grown
more and more repulsive day by day, since those fits of drunken passion
had become a thing of fearful frequency, and those little ones had
suffered from their violence, and learned to fear her, they had come but
seldom--never alone; but they are approaching now, shyly, hesitatingly,
as if afraid to come, but still approaching--pausing at the very
threshold. The burning tears force their way through the clenched
fingers--the sound of the little feet has given her power to pray.
Though angels fail in the work of redemption, there may yet be power in
the little hands to hold her back. She does not rise to open the door,
but sits choking down her sobs, and listening to the turning, twisting,
shaking of the door knob, to a dozen failures in unskilful attempts to
enter, every movement of the little hand sending a strange thrill of
mingled pain and pleasure through the overburdened heart.
It opens at last, and Harry stands upon the threshold, looking timidly
in. Ah! no maudlin sorrow, no senseless, idiotic mirth, no disgusting
stupor disfigures the face on which he gazes. Its depth of hopeless,
despairing tenderness, so eloquently accompanied by the pathetic
movement of the outstretched hands, almost frightens him by its
intensity; but, in obedience to the motion, he comes forward,
half-fearfully proffering the flower he holds in his hand.
'A flower sent to her by a lady who was so kind,' he tremblingly
explains, 'one that he loves so dearly!'
It is the lily, the emblem of purity. She takes it from him, lays it on
the table behind her, out of sight, a sullen glow of resentment at the
gift mingling with the sorrow of her face as she does so. What mother
had fathomed her shameful secret, and dared to send her child to her
with a gift like that? Some one that is fast gaining the place she
should have occupied in his heart! One that is fast winning away from
her the love she so much needs to aid her in the desired reformation.
She notes how the little face softens and brightens when he speaks of
her, and a sharp pang of jealousy shoots through her heart. The fact
that she has never sought to win that heart to herself by kindness, that
she has forfeited her child's respect, and never deserved its love, only
increases her resentment and adds poignancy to the pang. She feels the
slight form start and shiver with a strange, fearful repulsion as she
places it on her lap. Would the strong natural affection nature had
implanted there, so cruelly crushed out, now nearly if not quite dead,
arise anew to life, and grow stronger than this repulsion? That is the
question to be answered _now_. Ah! if there were but a spark remaining,
were it only a poor, feeble, smouldering flame, it would have the power,
she felt, to light her to higher and better things. With a thrill of
pure maternal love, a stranger to her heart, whose holiest impulses,
deadened by reckless indulgence, have degenerated into instincts, she
folds the little form closer to her, in spite of its shuddering, and,
looking into the upturned face (O mother, miserably blind), reads
understandingly for the first time the hunger of heart so legibly
written on every speaking feature. With the sharp arrow of conviction
that pierces her soul at the sight, comes a voice appealing to its
inmost recesses, a voice speaking those words spoken by the great heart
of Divine Compassion, eighteen hundred years ago; those words of
tenderest pleading: _'Feed my lambs!_' How had she fed those committed
to her charge? The wan, thin, sorrowful face, the little heart finding
no joy in life, grown weary before its time, best answer that question.
Aided by her aroused spiritual perceptions, she reads now all too
truthfully the sad, sad record of the heart-breaking loneliness of the
life she has made desolate; and, pressing the wronged heart close
against her own, the keen remorse of her soul bursts forth in a low moan
of irrepressible anguish:
'Oh, my child! my little, little, little child!'
Studying the face bent over him as children learn to study the faces of
those whom they have reason to fear, whose kindness is at best
capricious, and finding nothing but sorrow and tenderness in it, he
began to fear it less: thankful even for a brief season of kindness, the
solitary child laid the pale cheek close against his mother's, and
twined the thin arms about her neck. It was a strange and blissful
sensation for that mother to feel them clinging there. In her softened
mood it made the tears fall hot and fast, to think how strange it was.
'What made Harry think of coming to see ma to-day?' she said at last,
brushing them hurriedly away.
'A lady gave me that flower, mamma, and told me to bring it to you.'
A pause and a closer pressure--then she questioned nervously:
'What lady is it, Harry? Where does she live? How came you to know her,
darling?'
Harry hesitated. He noticed the dark shadow that swept across her face
at every reference to his new-found friend, and, with a child's
intuitive perception, he saw the subject gave her pain. Striving with
ready tact to draw her attention from it to himself, he went back to the
beginning, to give her a sort of history of how he came to form the
acquaintance.
'Mamma,' he said timidly, twining his arms still closer around her neck,
and speaking in a slow, hesitating way, as if he feared that this would
give her pain also, 'our house, you know, is a very lonesome place. Oh,
so _very_ lonesome!--just like a day when the sun won't shine, and the
rain comes dark and slow. Well, ma, it was always bad enough, but when
Charley went away to school, and you stayed up here more than ever, and
Betty got crosser than ever, you can't think _how_ lonesome it was! Pa
used to bring me playthings at first, but I felt so bad I couldn't play
with them. I felt all the time as if I wanted something, and,' glancing
piteously up into his mother's face, and laying his little hand upon his
heart, 'as if I was _so hungry here_. Well, I used to climb up at the
window and watch the people going by, and wonder and wonder what the
matter was.' He waited as if half expecting an answer; but a stifled sob
was the only reply. 'Looking out the window and seeing other people, I
found out after a while that we were different from everybody else.
Other mothers who had little boys like me, always took their little boys
with them when they went to walk. All the sunshiny days they went
walking up and down--walking up and down; and the mothers were not cross
like Betty, and the little boys were not lonesome like me, but had such
red, chubby cheeks, and looked happy 'most all the time. The first day I
found this out, when Betty took me away from the window, and stood me up
before the glass to comb my hair, and I looked in and saw what a face I
had, I cried and cried. Then the mothers would smile and look pleased
whenever their little boys spoke to them, and seemed to love them so
much, that I wanted them to love me too; and I used to throw little
things out of the window sometimes, so that they would look up and smile
at me.'
Ah! the young, tender heart, living, as yet, only by the affections,
that required such a wealth of love to fill it! The little outcast heart
depending on casual passers by for a stray word or look of comfort,
striving to feed itself on such poor, miserable crumbs as these! It made
the mother's face grow white with anguish to think of _that_.
'Well, about just such a time every morning, when Charley had gone to
school, and I sat by the window as lonesome as lonesome could be, on the
sidewalk under the window there always came a lady who was kinder to me
than the other ladies, who _always_ looked up and smiled. Such a
beautiful lady, ma, with a face as kind as pa's, and a great deal more
smiling; you'd love her if you saw her; I know you would--you couldn't
help it. And ma,' and here Harry's enthusiasm died out, and his voice
took a sadder tone, 'she's got a little boy, just about as big as I am,
and she always takes him with her when she goes out, just like the other
ladies. And--and ma'--the low voice had a frightened tone in it, as if
the little one feared he was venturing too far.
'Yes, Harry.'
'I thought--that--that--'
'What, darling?'
'That if you would go out to walk yourself sometimes, and take us with
you, Charley and me, that we shouldn't be so different from everybody
else, and it wouldn't be quite so lonesome here.'
A long pause followed--a frightened pause on Harry's part. Venturing,
after a little while, to look into his mother's face, its sadness,
unmixed with anger reassured him, and he proceeded:
'That was the lady who sent you the flower. She lives in a little white
house just across the road. One day, when Betty took me out for a walk,
I ran away and went there; and I have been there a good many times
since. It's a little house, ma, a very little house. There are no bright
pictures or beautiful carpets in it; but they are never lonesome there.
She is as kind to her little boy every day as you are to me now. It's a
long time, ma, since you kissed me and held me on your lap, and acted as
if you loved me! Oh, mamma!' He laid the pale cheek, wet with grateful
tears, close against her own. 'Why a'n't you good to me always? I love
you _now_, but I don't love you always; I _can't_ love you always, ma.
That day when you frightened me so, when you pulled my hair, threw me
down on the floor, and whipped me till the blood ran, I didn't like you
for a long time _then_, you hurt me so.'
The grief of the wretched mother burst forth anew in sobs and tears.
'Oh, Harry! oh, my poor, poor child! Did ma do that?'
'Don't cry, ma, oh, don't cry; I don't think you meant to do it. There
is something that changes you, that makes you cross and strange. And
ma'--the timid voice sank away to a low, frightened whisper, broken and
tremulous with tears.
'Yes, dearest.'
'You won't be angry, dear mamma?'
'No, love, no.'
He hid his face on her shoulder, sobbing:
'It's something that you drink. They never have it there, in that little
house,' pursued Harry in a voice choked with rushing tears. 'They never
have it anywhere where they are happy. Oh, mamma! If you'd only send it
away, if you'd throw it away, if you would put it out of sight; oh, my
dear, dear mamma, if you would never look at it, never taste it, never,
never drink it any more!' In the energy of his supplication he twined
the little arms still closer and closer about her neck--his tears fell
like rain upon her bosom. That baby face, eloquent with entreaty and wet
with tears! She could not bear to see it. Crimson with shame, she hid
her own in her outstretched hands. 'She never drinks it. I've watched
her; she drinks coffee sometimes, water sometimes, _tea_ 'most always.
Ma, if you must drink something, why wouldn't _tea_ do just as well?'
She folded her arms about the little form, and clasped it to her bosom.
Her face was lighted with a high resolve, the heart against which her
child's was pressed was throbbing with a lofty impulse.
'It would, my darling, it would; with God's help, it shall. Here in His
holy presence, I solemnly promise, if there is any strength in good
resolutions, if there is any power of good left within me, if God will
not utterly forsake one who has so long forsaken her better nature,
never, never, from this time, henceforth and forever, to touch, taste,
or look upon the accursed thing.'
That night, at the foot of the tall poplar, the flickering sunlight
falling through the leaves on his head, making the brown hair golden
where it fell, Harry sat watching the coming of his brother. He had not
long to wait; in a little while the red, slanting rays fell on that
other head of darker brown. The well-known form appeared at the gateway,
and Harry went bounding down the gravel walk to meet him.
'Ma wants to see you,' panted the little brother. 'She wanted you to
come up to her room as soon as ever you got home. She sent me to tell
you so.'
The message was such an unusual one, he was so flushed and excited, so
_proud_ to give it, and the look of joy shining in the pale face was
such a stranger to it, that the great brown eyes of the elder brother
opened wide in silent wonder, and the excited Harry had caught him by
both hands, and was dragging him by main force toward the house before
he had recovered from his astonishment sufficiently to speak.
'I don't want to go,' cried the unwilling Charley, ruefully drawing
back. 'I don't _want_ to go, Harry. _Why_ does she want to see me? What
_makes_ her want to see me? I a'n't done nothing to be whipped for!'
'Oh! it isn't _that_,' returned the little fellow eagerly. 'We a'n't
going to be whipped any more, unless we're real naughty, and then not
very hard; and ma is going to send Betty away, and we a'n't going to be
scolded any more; and she's going to take us to walk and ride with her
sometimes, as the other mothers do. Why,' cried the eager child, all
glowing at the delightful prospect, 'Why, Charley, we're going to be
happy now.'
'Oh, I don't believe we are,' sadly sighed the more experienced Charley,
scratching his curls disconsolately, and looking at his brother in a
maze of perplexity and doubt. 'I've thought we were going to be happy a
great many times, but we a'n't been never, and I don't believe we ever
will be. The first thing I remember was being lonesome, and I've been as
lonesome as could be ever since. No, no; we shall never be happy. Ta'n't
no use thinking about being happy,' and the forlorn child threw himself
upon the grass in a hopeless and dejected manner. 'But they _do_ say,
Harry,' he continued, looking up through the leaves at the blue vault
above him, 'that there's a place up yonder somewhere where good people
go when they die, and where _everybody_ is happy. I've thought, since I
heard about it, that perhaps some people went there without dying. If
they _do_, Harry, and I can only find out the way, I'd leave this mean
old place, and go there straight, this very minute. I'd like to have you
and pa come, Harry; but ma is always scolding or whipping us for
something. I don't like ma, and I don't care whether she ever gets there
or not. Come to think of it,' pursued Charley, as a new thought seemed
to strike him, 'I had a good deal rather she wouldn't come; for if she
_did_ find out the way, and come up there after a while, like as any way
she'd bring a switch with her.'
'You shouldn't talk so about ma, Charley,' said his meek-eyed brother.
'She isn't cross _always_. She has been kind to me to-day, so kind,'
said the little fellow, stemming with his fingers two great round drops
that were slowly running down his cheeks, 'that it makes the tears come
to think about it. I was with her a great long while, and she didn't
scold or speak cross once. Why, only think, Charley,' he proceeded,
opening his eyes, as if the fact about to be communicated could never be
sufficiently wondered at, 'we were all alone together for ever so long,
and she might have got angry and whipped me just as well as not, and pa
would never know anything about it.'
'It's a wonder she didn't,' scornfully returned his brother; 'it would
have been such a nice chance. She don't get such a chance as _that_
every day. There wouldn't have been any fun in it if she had, though;
for I tell you what it is,' he continued, looking about on his hands for
sundry marks and dents left thereon by the nails of his mother, 'I tell
you what it is, Harry, when she gets hold of a feller, she digs right
in. She pounds us more than half the time for just nothing at all, only
because she gets mad and likes to do it. To be sure, I get mad myself
sometimes, and say ugly words, and ought to be whipped; but you, _you_
never do anything to be whipped for, and _she_,' proceeded the indignant
little fellow, with an emphasis of immeasurable scorn on that personal
pronoun, '_she_ to go to work and pound a little, pale fellow like you!
Why, she ought to be ashamed of herself. I get so mad sometimes when she
gets to whipping us, and pa comes to take us away, that I think if he
would pound her just as hard as she pounds us, and just long enough to
let us see how good it feels, I wouldn't care a bit--I'd just like it:
but he don't never; he only trembles all over and gets very white, sets
her down in a chair, and takes us out of the room--buys us playthings,
or tells us stories to stop our crying, and that's the end of it until
next time.'
Poor Harry! the color had faded from his face, the light from his eyes.
That deep shadow of inexpressible mournfulness had again crept into
them. Memory of such scenes, as are never garnered up in the breasts of
happy childhood, shadowed his face and heart. His short-lived happiness
was over. He made no reply to his brother, but sat motionless, gazing at
the sky with a searching, yearning, far-off gaze. Looking at the two
young faces turned upward, it would have been hard to say which was the
saddest. Young as they were, traces of the working of the curse which
had blighted their lives, were plainly visible in both. Both were
equally pale and thoughtful, both robbed of the brightness and gayety
belonging to their years, only varying in expression as they varied in
temperament. The look of meek and patient endurance on the face of the
younger spoke of a nature that wrong and suffering might crush, but
could never rouse to anger or resentment--of a heart that would break,
if must be, but would patiently lie down and die. The scornful defiance
flashing ever and anon in the face of the elder brother, the
immeasurable bitterness mingling with its sadness, showed a proud and
fiery temperament that could be goaded to desperation.
'But she shall never strike me many times more,' continued Charley, with
suppressed indignation. After a pause, during which, with compressed lip
and clouded brow, he had been resentfully dwelling upon the pain and
humiliation consequent upon the blows he had received: 'Never! never!
for I don't care if it _is_ wrong, if pa _does_ tell me not to do it, I
don't care if she is my mother; after I get just a little bigger, when
she strikes me, I'm going to strike back again.'
These vengeful threats exciting no answering comments from his brother,
Charley turned to look at him. A strange prophetic chill swept across
the intuitional soul, and filled it with vague, shuddering apprehension.
'Harry, don't look that way; Harry, come back to yourself! Oh, Harry!
take your eyes from the sky and look at me. You frighten me so!' cried
Charley, in a voice tremulous with agitation.
The consciousness of his surroundings had dawned so slowly on the rapt
soul, the patient face had turned toward his brother's so calmly, he was
so meek and quiet, so undemonstrative usually, that he was totally
unprepared for the wild burst of passionate weeping with which Harry
threw himself upon his neck.
'Oh! Charley, Charley, I cannot find it, I cannot see the land you talk
of. I know it must be there, where the sky is clear and the sun is
shining; but I've been looking, and I can't see it anywhere. Oh!
Charley, where is it? Where is the place up yonder where they are good
and happy? Show me the way there, show me the way. I don't want to stay
_here_,' sobbed Harry, coming back to his own hopeless self again; 'I
want to go somewhere where folks don't have to be lonesome all the time;
I don't know what dying is, but if dying will do it, I want dying to
take me there.'
He had drawn his brother toward him, wiped his tears away with his own
little apron, and soothed him as well as his agitation would permit,
striving, amid the tumult of his thoughts, to gather up such meagre
scraps of information as he had gleaned upon the subject, and put it
into intelligible words, when, from a window almost hidden by the leaves
of the tree under which they were sitting, they heard a voice calling
to them, a familiar voice, but with a new tone in it, which quickens
their pulse-beat, and makes their hearts throb with a sweet joy. Dimly
visible through the foliage, a familiar face is looking down upon them,
loving and tender as any mother's face should be; and with that look,
the strong instinctive love for her which nature had implanted in their
hearts awoke in all its strength. Pride, anger, sorrow, were all alike
forgotten. To her loving call there came from eager lips the ready
response:
'Yes, mamma; we are coming, dear mamma.'
Those who are blessed with golden memories of a happy childhood,
perchance but lightly prize Heaven's brightest, choicest gift. Those who
have never felt the hungering and thirsting of a heart deprived of
sympathy and kindness, the desolate pining of that state more sorrowful
than orphanage, can but feebly, faintly guess how tender tones and soft
caresses, loving words and looks, such common blessings as awaken in the
happy thought of gratitude, were treasured up in these lonely hearts as
gifts of priceless value, or measure the deep thankfulness which
thrilled them as they knelt side by side at their mother's knee, and
said their prayers in the deepening twilight that summer night.
They had a table spread before the open window, and had their supper in
their mother's room, and, as the light sank into darkness, with an arm
thrown around each little form caressingly, and a brown head resting on
each shoulder, they sat beside her on the sofa, and listened as she told
them, in language suited to their childish comprehension, of the coming
joys in store for them, of what a happy home their future home should
be, now that she had resolutely parted from the curse that had destroyed
their peace, and forever turned her back against it;--listened as she
drew glowing pictures of the walks and rides they would take, of the
varied pleasures they would enjoy together, pleasures it should be her
pleasing task to plan. They had nothing to damp their enjoyment, for she
had dismissed Betty, and with her own hands undressed and bathed them,
and robed them for the night; and they enjoyed it all, not with the keen
zest, the careless hilarity of childhood, but with the subdued and
thoughtful gravity seen in beings of maturer years, to whose lot has
fallen more of the sorrows than the joys of life, and who receive
happiness, when at rare intervals it comes to them, with a tremulous
thankfulness, as if fearful of entertaining so strange a guest; and when
at last it ended, as all happy seasons must, and both tired heads rested
on one pillow, Harry whispered to his brother:
'There is nothing to be sorry for _now_, Charley. She will never drink
that dark stuff any more--I know she never will; she will never forget
the promise she has made.'
Then the drowsy eyes, ere they closed, sought the dim night sky for that
star, the brightest in the blue above him, which had revealed itself
through his tears, when alone in the darkness he had first learned to
pray, and, gazing on it, and on the sky beyond, where a happier home
than any earthly one is proffered, murmured to himself, with a peaceful
smile:
'Oh! we shall be so happy, so very, very, very happy!'