The first unequivocal
act of wrong that has left its trace in my memory was this:
refusing a small favor asked of me,--nothing more than telling what
had happened at school one morning. No matter who asked it; but
there were circumstances which saddened and awed me. I had no
heart to speak;--I faltered some miserable, perhaps petulant
excuse, stole away, and the first battle of life was lost. What
remorse followed I need not tell. Then and there, to the best of
my knowledge, I first consciously took Sin by the hand and turned
my back on Duty. Time has led me to look upon my offence more
leniently; I do not believe it or any other childish wrong is
infinite, as some have pretended, but infinitely finite. Yet, oh
if I had but won that battle!
The great Destroyer, whose awful shadow it was that had silenced
me, came near me,--but never, so as to be distinctly seen and
remembered, during my tender years. There flits dimly before me
the image of a little girl, whose name even I have forgotten, a
schoolmate, whom we missed one day, and were told that she had
died. But what death was I never had any very distinct idea, until
one day I climbed the low stone wall of the old burial-ground and
mingled with a group that were looking into a very deep, long,
narrow hole, dug down through the green sod, down through the brown
loam, down through the yellow gravel, and there at the bottom was
an oblong red box, and a still, sharp, white face of a young man
seen through an opening at one end of it.
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