When were thy first thoughts of death?  I do not mean the sight of the coffin, the pall, or any of its sad accompaniments, but the time when the mind first arrested itself with the melancholy convictions of mortality.  There was a holiday for me in my young days, to which I looked forward as the Mohammedan to his Paradise; this was a visit to a country-place, where I revelled in the breath of the woodbines and sweetbriers, and where I sat under tall and spreading trees, and wondered why towns and cities were ever built.  The great willows swept the windows of the chamber where I slept, and faces with faded eyes looked upon me from their old frames, by the moonlight, as I fell asleep, after the day’s enjoyment.  I never tired of wandering through the gardens, where were roses and sweet-williams, hyacinths and honeysuckles, and flowers of every shape and hue.  This was the fairy spot of my recollection, for even childhood has its cares, and there were memories of little griefs, which time has never chased away.  There I used to meet two children, who often roamed through the near woods with me.  I do not remember their ages nor their names; they were younger though than I. They might not have been beautiful, but I recollect the bright eyes, and that downy velvet hue that is only found on the soft check of infancy.

Summer came; and when I went again, I found the clematis sweeping the garden walks, and the lilies-of-the-valley bending under the weight of their own beauty.  So we walked along, I and an old servant, stopping to enter an arbor, or to raise the head of a drooping plant, or to pluck a sweet-scented shrub, and place it in my bosom.  “Where are the little girls?” I asked.  “Have they come again, too?”

“Yes, they are here,” she said, as we approached two little mounds, covered over with the dark-green myrtle and its purple flowers.

“What is here?”

“Child, here are the little ones you asked for.”

Oh! those little myrtle-covered graves, how wonderingly I gazed upon them.  There was no thought of death mingled with my meditation; there was, of quiet and repose, but not of death.  I had seen no sickness, no suffering, and I only wondered why those fair children had laid down under the myrtle.  I fancied them with the fringed eyelids drooping over the cheeks, and the velvet hue still there.  How much did I know of death?  As little as of life!

Time passed with me, and I saw the sorrows of others.  Sometimes I thought of the myrtle-covered graves, and the children that slept beneath.  Oh! how quiet they must be, they utter no cry, they shed no tears.

Time passed, and an angel slept in my bosom, close to my heart.  Need I say that I was happy when she nestled there? that her voice was music to my soul, and her smile the very presence of beauty?  Need I say it was joy when she called me, Mother?  Then I lived for the present; all the sorrow that I had seen around me, was forgotten.