"The mildest herald by our fate allotted
Beckons! and with inverted torch doth stand
To lead us, with a gentle hand,
Into the land of the departed,--into the silent land.
Ah, when the frame round which in love we cling,
Is chilled by death, does mutual service fail?
Is tender pity then of no avail?
Are intercessions of the fervent tongue
A waste of hope?"
WORDSWORTH.
The two slaves that completed the evening group had been brought into
Mr. Grafton's family at the time of his marriage. Dinah was the most
striking in personal appearance. She had been born a princess in her
native land; and her erect and nobly-proportioned form had never been
crushed by the feeling of abject slavery.
From the moment they entered the family of Mr. Grafton, they were
regarded as children, even the lambs of the flock.
They were both at that time young, and soon entered into the more
intimate relation of husband and wife; identifying their own dearest
interests, and making each other only subordinate to what seemed to them
even more sacred,--their devotion to their master and mistress.
Dinah's mind was of a more elevated order than Paul's, her husband. If
she had not been a princess in her own country, she belonged to those
upon whose souls God has stamped the patent of nobility.
Naturally proud, she was docile to the instructions of her excellent
mistress; and her high and imperious spirit was soon subdued to the
gentle influences of domestic love, and to the purifying and elevating
spirit of Christianity.
Her mistress taught her to read. The Bible was her favorite book; and
she became wise in that best wisdom of the heart, which is found in an
intimate knowledge of the Holy Scriptures. Her character, under the
burning sun of Africa, would have been intolerable; but it was tempered
to a soft moonlight radiance, by the shading of Christianity.
Though her imperious spirit at first rebelled against slavery, there was
no toil, no fatigue, no menial service, however humble, which she would
not have sought for those she loved. Love elevated every toil, and gave
it, in her eyes, the dignity of a voluntary and disinterested service.
She had been the only nurse of her kind mistress through her last long
illness. Hers was that faithful affection that preferred long vigils at
the bedside through the watches of the night,--the nurse that the
sleepless eye ever found awake. Hers was that sentient sympathy that
could interpret the weary look,--that love that steals into the darkened
room, anticipating every wish, divining every want, and which, in
silence, like the evening dew on drooping flowers, revives and soothes
the sufferer.
Her cares were unavailing: her kind mistress died, commending the little
Edith to her watchful love.
Dinah received her as if she had been more than the child of her own
bosom. Henceforth she was the jewel of her life; and, if Mr. Grafton had
not interposed, she would have treated her like those precious jewels of
the old Scottish regalia, that are said to be approached by only one
person at a time, and that by torch-light.
Our forefathers and foremothers had a maxim that the will of every child
must be early broken, to insure that implicit and prompt obedience that
the old system of education demanded. Mr. Grafton wisely left the
breaking of the little Edith's will to Dinah.
As we have seen, she was of a gentle temper, but, as a child, determined
and obstinate. Obstinacy in a child is the strength of purpose which, in
man and woman, leads to all excellence. Before it is guided by reason,
it is mere wilfulness. It was wonderful with what a silken thread Dinah
guided the little Edith.
She possessed in her own character the firmness of the oak, and an iron
resolution, but tempered so finely by the influences of love and
religion, that she yielded to every thing that was not hurtful; but
there she stopped, and went not a hair's breadth further.
It was beautiful to see the little Edith watching the mild and loving
but firm eye of Dinah,--which spoke as plain as eye could speak,--and,
when it said "_No_," yielding like a young lamb to a silken tether.
Nothing is easier than to gain the prompt obedience of a young child.
Gentleness, firmness, and steadiness, are all that is requisite.
Gentleness, firmness, and steadiness,--the two last perhaps the rarest
qualities in tender mothers. When a young child finds its mother
uniform--not one day weakly indulgent, and the next capriciously severe,
but always the same mild, firm being--she is to the child like a
beneficent but unchanging Providence; and he no more expects his own
will to prevail, than children of an older growth expect the sun to
stand still, and the seasons to change their order, for their
convenience.
As soon as the little girl was old enough, she became the pupil of her
father. Under his instruction, she could read the Latin authors with
facility; and even his favorite Greek classics became playfully familiar
as household words, although she really knew little about them. But the
Christian ethics came home more closely to her woman's heart: their
tender, pure, self-denying principles were more congenial to the truly
feminine nature of the little Edith.
The character and example of her mother were ever held up to her by
Dinah. At night, after her little childish prayer, when she laid her
head on her pillow, her last thought was of her mother.
Ah, it is not necessary to be a Catholic, to believe in the intercession
of saints. To a tender heart, a mother lost in infancy is the beautiful
Madonna of the church; and the heart turns as instinctively to her as
the devout Catholic turns to the holy mother and child.
In all Edith's solitary rambles, her pensive thoughts sought her mother.
There was a particular spot in the evening sky where she fancied the
spirit of her mother to dwell; and there, in all her childish griefs,
she sought sympathy, and turned her eye towards it in childlike
devotion.