Memories | Page 7

day she was brought into our room. She looked
exceedingly pale; but her eyes were deeper and brighter than ever, and
she sat upon her couch and called us to her. "It is my birth-day," said
she, "and I was confirmed early this morning. Now, it is possible," she
continued as she looked upon her father with a smile, "that God may

soon call me to him, although I would gladly remain with you much
longer. But if I am to leave you, I desire that you should not wholly
forget me; and, therefore, I have brought a ring for each of you, which
you must now place upon the fore-finger. As you grow older you can
continue to change it until it fits the little finger; but you must wear it
for your lifetime."
With these words she took the five rings she wore upon her fingers,
which she drew off, one after the other, with a look so sad and yet so
affectionate, that I pressed my eyes closely to keep from weeping. She
gave the first ring to her eldest brother and kissed him, the second and
third to the two princesses, and the fourth to the youngest prince, and
kissed them all as she gave them the rings. I stood near by, and, looking
fixedly at her white hand, saw that she still had a ring upon her finger;
but she leaned back and appeared wearied. My eyes met hers, and as
the eyes of a child speak so loudly, she must have easily known my
thoughts, I would rather not have had the last ring, for I felt that I was a
stranger; that I did not belong to her, and that she was not as
affectionate to me as to her brothers and sisters. Then came a sharp
pain in my breast as if a vein had burst or a nerve had been severed, and
I knew not which way to turn to conceal my anguish.
She soon raised herself again, placed her hand upon my forehead and
looked down into my heart so deeply that I felt I had not a thought
invisible to her. She slowly drew the last ring from her finger, gave it to
me and said; "I intended to have taken this with me, when I went from
you, but it is better you should wear it and think of me when I am no
longer with you. Read the words engraved upon the ring: 'As God
wills.' You have a passionate heart, easily moved. May life subdue but
not harden it." Then she kissed me as she had her brothers and gave me
the ring.
All my feelings I do not truly know. I had then grown up to boyhood,
and the mild beauty of the suffering angel could not linger in my young
heart without alluring it. I loved her as only a boy can love, and boys
love with an intensity and truth and purity which few preserve in their
youth and manhood; but I believed she belonged to the "strange
people" to whom you are not allowed to speak of love. I scarcely
understood the earnest words she spoke to me. I only felt that her soul
was as near to mine as one human soul can be to another. All bitterness

was gone from my heart. I felt myself no longer alone, no longer a
stranger, no longer shut out. I was by her, with her and in her. I thought
it might be a sacrifice for her to give me the ring, and that she might
have preferred to take it to the grave with her, and a feeling arose in my
soul which overshadowed all other feelings, and I said with quivering
voice: "Thou must keep the ring if thou dost not wish to give it to me;
for what is thine is mine." She looked at me a moment surprised and
thoughtfully. Then she took the ring, placed it on her finger, kissed me
once more on the forehead, and said gently to me: "Thou knowest not
what thou sayest. Learn to understand thyself. Then shall thou be happy
and make many others happy."

FOURTH MEMORY.
Every life has its years in which one progresses as on a tedious and
dusty street of poplars, without caring to know where he is. Of these
years nought remains in memory but the sad feeling that we have
advanced and only grown older. While the river of life glides along
smoothly, it remains the same river; only the landscape on either bank
seems to change. But then come the cataracts of life. They are firmly
fixed in memory, and even when we are past them and far away, and
draw nearer and nearer to the