He could have wished that they might be always the happy, youthful creatures, who had hitherto sported around his chair, without inquiring whether it had a history.

It grieved him to think that his little Alice, who was a flower-bud fresh from paradise, must open her leaves to the rough breezes of the world, or ever open them in any clime.
So sweet a child she was, that it seemed fit her infancy should be immortal! But such repinings were merely flitting shadows across the old man's heart.

He had faith enough to believe, and wisdom enough to know, that the bloom of the flower would be even holier and happier than its bud.

Even within himself,--though Grandfather was now at that period of life, when the veil of mortality is apt to hang heavily over the soul,--still, in his inmost being, he was conscious of something that he would not have exchanged for the best happiness of childhood.

It was a bliss to which every sort of earthly experience,--all that he had enjoyed or suffered, or seen, or heard, or acted, with the broodings of his soul upon the whole,--had contributed somewhat.