Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/29

Rh his long summer. The knot of little ones that encircle them, down to the golden-haired, blue-eyed, three-year old boy and girl in the corner, who stand with their tiny arms clasped about each other, are his grandchildren. The dark-eyed child, the central star of this youthful galaxy, in a voice, distinct, liquid, and full of genuine pathos, utters the salutatory lines which some elder sister (given to the sin of rhyming,) has taught her. The verses have no value in themselves, yet happy tears roll slowly down the cheeks of the Patriarch, and fall from the gentle eyes of his wife, as they listen. And friends weep, not merely because the sight moves them, but because, oh! truly because they feel and are melted by the beauty of that Patriarch's old age. These were the words the little damsel uttered with such touching emphasis:—