Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 3.djvu/122

Rh breaks only in a quiet ripple on all those hundred thousand lips, he hears no noise; but with wintry hands solemnly the church clock strikes the midnight hour. In his locket he looks again. This other twist is the hair of his firstborn son. At this same hour of midnight, once—it is now many years ago—when the long agony was over he knelt and prayed—"My God, I thank thee that I, though father, am still a husband too! O, what have I done! what am I, that unto me, thus a life should be given, and another spared! "Now he has children, and children's children—the joy of his old age. But for many a year his wife has looked to him from beyond the Evening Star; yea, still she is herself the Evening Star, yet more beautiful; a star that never sets; not mortal wife now, but angel; and he says, "How long, Lord? when lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, that mine eyes may see thy salvation?" The last stick on his andirons snaps asunder, and falls outward. Two faintly smoking brands stand there. Grand- father lays them together, and they flame up; the two smokes are one united flame. "Even so let it be in heaven," says Grandfather.

Dr Priestly, when he was young, preached that old age was the happiest time of life; and when he was himself eighty he wrote, "I have found it so." But the old age of the glutton, the fop, the miser, the hunter after place, the bigot, the shrew, what would that be? Think of the old age of a Boston Kidnapper! It is only a noble, manly life, full of piety, which makes old age beautiful. Then we ripen for Eternity, and the dear God looks down from heaven, and lays his hand on the venerable head "Come, thou beloved, inherit the Kingdom prepared for thee."