Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/31



TEP-MOTHER! Unmusically jars the word upon the ear! A sense of something harsh and chilling strikes against the heart at the sound. The vision of a place usurped, of children thrust from their father's knee, of old and pleasant ways put aside, and all things rendered strange and new in the familiar home, is conjured up by its utterance.

Let that not be! thou who hast borne a step-mother's title with such wondrous grace that it becomes ennobled in thy person. Give it melody, caught from the music of thy accordant life! Stand forth in the purple light of my thoughts, draped with the sweet and sacred memories which cling about thy lovely presence, that I may paint thee fitly. If the lines be but true, the tinting faithful, the portrait thine, it will wipe away the long reproach from the name of "step-dame," and embalm it in the fragrant aroma of gratitude and reverence and most tender love.

The waves of twenty years, or more, have melted