She placed it lovingly in her bosom, and sat down by the bedside.

Already, through love, sorrow, and obedience, she began to find herself drawing nearer to him than she had ever been before; already she was able to recall his last words, and strengthen her resolve to keep them.

And, sitting thus, holding vague companionship with the merely mortal, the presence of that which was not her father, which was like him only to remind her that it was not he, and which must so soon cease to resemble him, there sprang, as in the very footprint of Death, yet another flower of rarest comfort--a strong feeling, namely, of the briefness of time, and the certainty of the messenger's return to fetch herself.

Her soul did not sink into peace, but a strange peace awoke in her spirit.
She heard the spring of the great clock that measures the years rushing rapidly down with a feverous whir, and saw the hands that measure the weeks and months careering around its face; while Death, like one of the white-robed angels in the tomb of the Lord, sat watching, with patient smile, for the hour when he should be wanted to go for her.
Thus mingled her broken watch, her father's death, and Jean Paul's dream; and the fancy might well comfort her.
I will not linger much more over the crumbling time.

It is good for those who are in it, specially good for those who come out of it chastened and resolved; but I doubt if any prolonged contemplation of death is desirable for those whose business it now is to live, and whose fate it is ere long to die.