breath as Laura stretched her arms towards little Maurice.
The child looked for an instant searchingly, but fearlessly, at her
glowing cheeks, her bright eyes, her welcoming smile, and met her
embrace as she clasped him to her bosom as if he had known her all his
days.
The mortal antipathy had died out of the soul and the blood of Maurice
Kirkwood at that supreme moment when he found himself snatched from the
grasp of death and cradled in the arms of Euthymia.
--------------------------
In closing the New Portfolio I remember that it began with a prefix
which the reader may by this time have forgotten, namely, the First
Opening. It was perhaps presumptuous to thus imply the probability of a
second opening.
I am reminded from time to time by the correspondents who ask a certain
small favor of me that, as I can only expect to be with my surviving
contemporaries a very little while longer, they would be much obliged if
I would hurry up my answer before it is too late. They are right, these
delicious unknown friends of mine, in reminding me of a fact which I
cannot gainsay and might suffer to pass from my recollection. I thank
them for recalling my attention to a truth which I shall be wiser, if
not more hilarious, for remembering.
No, I had no right to say the First Opening. How do I know that I shall
have a chance to open it again? How do I know that anybody will want it
to be opened a second time? How do I know that I shall feel like opening
it? It is safest neither to promise to open the New Portfolio once more,
nor yet to pledge myself to keep it closed hereafter. There are many
papers potentially existent in it, some of which might interest a
reader here and there. The Records of the Pansophian Society contain
a considerable number of essays, poems, stories, and hints capable of
being expanded into presentable dimensions. In the mean time I will say
with Prospero, addressing my old readers, and my new ones, if such I
have,
“If you be pleased, retire into my cell
And there repose: a turn or two I'll walk,
To still my beating mind.”
When it has got quiet I may take up the New Portfolio again, and
consider whether it is worth while to open it consider whether it is
worth while to open it.
End of Project Gutenberg's A Mortal Antipathy, by Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Sr.