"Am I the first
who, in the hot hour of fancy, has sought for a warmth which the stern
world of reality has denied him? Six dollars for a measure of fir-wood.
Yes, prosit, thou art not likely to get it before December! I write!
"Happy, threefold happy, the family, in whose narrow, contracted
circle no heart bleeds solitarily, or solitarily rejoices! No
look, no smile, remains unanswered; and where the friends say
daily, not with words but with deeds, to each other, 'Thy cares,
thy joys, thy happiness, are mine also!'"
"Lovely is the peaceful, the quiet home, which closes itself
protectingly around the weary pilgrim through life--which, around
its friendly blazing hearth, assembles for repose the old man
leaning on his staff, the strong man, the affectionate wife, and
happy children, who, shouting and exulting, hop about in their
earthly heaven, and closing a day spent in the pastimes of
innocence, repeat a thanksgiving prayer with smiling lips, and
drop asleep on the bosom of their parents, whilst the gentle voice
of the mother tells them, in whispered cradle-tones, how around
their couch--
"The little angels in a ring,
Stand round about to keep
A watchful guard upon the bed
Where little children sleep."
Here I was obliged to leave off, because I felt something
resembling a drop of rain come forth from my eye, and therefore
could not any longer see clearly.
"How many," thought I, as my reflections, against my will, took a
melancholy turn--"how many are there who must, to their sorrow, do
without this highest happiness of earthly life--domestic
happiness!"
For one moment I contemplated myself in the only whole glass which
I had in my room--that OF TRUTH,--and then wrote again with gloomy
feeling:--"Unhappy, indeed, may the forlorn one be called, who, in
the anxious and cool moments of life (which, indeed, come so
often), is pressed to no faithful heart, whose sigh nobody
returns, whose quiet grief nobody alleviates with a 'I understand
thee, I suffer with thee!'
"He is cast down, nobody raises him up; he weeps, nobody sees it,
nobody will see it; he goes, nobody follows him; he comes, nobody
goes to meet him; he rests, nobody watches over him.
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