By this
one movement, which I have seen repeatedly of late, I know that his
thoughts have gone before to another condition, and that he is, as it
were, looking back on the infirmities of the body as accidents of the
past. For, when he was well, one might see him often looking at the
handsome hand with the flaming jewel on one of its fingers. The single
well-shaped limb was the source of that pleasure which in some form or
other Nature almost always grants to her least richly endowed children.
Handsome hair, eyes, complexion, feature, form, hand, foot, pleasant
voice, strength, grace, agility, intelligence,--how few there are that
have not just enough of one at least of these gifts to show them that
the good Mother, busy with her millions of children, has not quite
forgotten them! But now he was thinking of that other state, where,
free from all mortal impediments, the memory of his sorrowful burden
should be only as that of the case he has shed to the insect whose
"deep-damasked wings" beat off the golden dust of the lily-anthers, as
he flutters in the ecstasy of his new life over their full-blown summer
glories.
No human being can rest for any time in a state of equilibrium, where
the desire to live and that to depart just balance each other.
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