Life had been wrecked, but living
remained. Calmly he took up the cripple's cane and went home; the
birds sang no song,--after tempests they do not sing until the sun
shines,--neither did the blossoms give him any greeting. Nature wastes
no trivialities on such grief; the mother, whose child comes in to her
broken-limbed and wounded, does not give it sugar-plums and kisses, but
waits in silence till the surgeon has done his kindly and appalling
office,--then, it may be, she sings her boy to sleep!
But this man took up life again and conquered it. Home grew about him
into serenity and cheer; as from the roots of a felled tree a thousand
verdant offshoots spring, tiny in stature, but fresh and vivid in
foliage, so out of this beheaded love arose a crowd of sweet affections
and tender services that made the fraternity of man seem possible, and
illustrated the pervasive care of God. He went out into life, and from
a heart wrung with all man can endure, and a brain tested in the fire,
spoke burning and fluent words of strength and consolation to hundreds
who, like him, had suffered, but were sinking under what he had borne.
And these words carried in them a reviving virtue. Men blessed him
silently, and women sang him in their hearts as they sing hymns of
prayer. Honors clustered about him as mosses to a rock; Fame relented,
and gave him an aureole in place of a crown; and Love, late, but sweeter
than sweet, like the last sun-ripened fruit of autumn, made honors and
fame alike endurable.
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