The Doctors Daughter | Page 3

of
May, in the year of Our Lord 1819, than Amey and Alfred Hampden
were on the eighth of December, 185-, at the advent of this little
stranger into their humble home. Buried in baby finery, this
unsuspecting new-comer slumbered contentedly in a dainty cot. The
room was silent and darkened, the bright morning sunshine being shut
out by the heavy curtains which were carefully drawn across the
window: there was a ring of rare contentment in the crackle and purr of
the wood-stove, that filled a remote corner of the room with its
comfortable presence: and the sustaining spirit of wedded love, was as
pronouncedly omnipresent as befitted the interesting occasion.
Thus, so far as the eye of those who prognosticate from existing
circumstances could see, there was every prospect of comfort and
happiness in the dawning future, for this passive little bundle of
humanity lying in state in her neatly furnished basket-cradle; whether it
pleased his reverence Father Time, or not, to subscribe thus obligingly
to the wishes of a concerned few, is a secret which my pen can best tell.
So strangely do the destinies of men and women resolve themselves out
of every day circumstances, that philosophers and moralists, with their
choicest erudition, are ofttimes puzzled over the solution of a
mysteriously chequered life, which they will not allow was guided by
the most natural and common-place accidents of existence.
That there are certain premises, from which the tenor of a yet unlived
life can be more or less accurately anticipated, no one will deny. There
are certain surroundings, certain particular circumstances, that, from
time immemorial have never failed to produce certain infallible results;
but, these abnormal pauses, and unforeseen interruptions, that, time and

again, have made of human lives the very thing against which
appearances were guarding them, are, it may be providentially, held
outside of the range of man's moral vision, and screen themselves in
ambush along either side of the seemingly smooth vista, that spans the
interval for certain individual human lives, between time and eternity.
Such a high-sounding title as predestination, seems to lose much of its
potent charm when we take an interesting existence into our hands, to
dissect it, and analyse it, and reduce it to a rational origin. Like decades
of heterogeneous pearls, a human career with all its varied details,
glides through the fingers of the moral anatomist, each fraction
standing out by itself, suggesting its own real or relative importance,
yet associating itself ever with the rest, making of the whole a more or
less intricate, and, at best, a very uneven chain.
When we consider that all the bewildering throng around and about us
have evolved into their present conditions of misery or joy from a
passive and innocent babyhood, we are mystified and awe-stricken;
there is so much inequality among the lots and portions of the children
of men, that it comes strangely home to us in our reverie, to realize that
the starting-point is, for one and all, the great and the lowly, one and
the same.
In its cradle, or on its mother's breast, the human creature knows no
special individuality, but when the rails of the cradle have been climbed
over, and the first foot-print stamped unaided upon the "sands of time,"
a distinct personality has been established, which is the embodiment of
possible, probable, or uncertain influences--a personality which grows
and thrives upon internal stimulants administered by an expanding
mind and heart, and which leans almost entirely for support upon the
external accidents of fate or fortune that may come in its way.
Were we as thoroughly penetrated with this conviction as we should be,
how different would be the issues of many human careers? Could we
accustom ourselves to meditate upon this truth as seriously as we
would upon a religious one, to examine our conscience from it as from
a reliable standpoint every day of our lives, what a flood of sympathy
and Christian charity would be let loose upon the social world from

converted hearts?
When men and women will thoroughly understand the strange and
intimate frame-work of human society, the wail of the pessimist will be
soothed and hushed forever: for then will they realize how dependent
we poor mortals are upon each other for sorrows or joys: then will it be
plain to them that no human life, however obscure, however trifling, is
an unfeeling thing, apart from every other, outside the daily contact of
every other.
Ah! we think, that God's creation, in all its grandeur and unrivalled
beauty, would be little worth, to a creature born to live and enjoy it
alone: and the infinite Wisdom decreed otherwise, when it gave unto
man a friend and companion in the first moments of his existence; but
is