Two Festivals | Page 7

chair and the closet itself? Why, Mother, I never should have believed you would have given it to me for my own. There is nothing I should like so well in the world. Shall I have the Shakespeare, and the Johnson, and the Classical Dictionary, and the Sir Charles Grandison, and all the old poets, and those French books in it, and the Homer and the Virgil too?"
"Yes, my son, I think I need not ask you to promise to lend them to me when I wish to borrow them. I have a great affection for this closet, Frank, and therefore I give it to you. If the walls could speak, they could tell you a great deal of your mother's history."
"I wish they could; I shall sit there a great deal, and I should like to hear all they have to say."
"As I have promised you to let you sit up till the new year comes in, I will tell you something now of what they would say. You know that this is the house in which I was born, so that this closet knew me from a child. Many a time, when I was a little girl, has my mother shut me up in it for refusing to obey her. It was gentle treatment shutting me up in this closet; had it not been called a punishment, I never should have thought it one. In summer time, the whispering of the wind through the pine trees rebuked my bad temper, and seemed to say, 'Hush, Alice! Peace! Be still.' I always came out better than I went into it. When I was nine years old, my father gave me this closet for my own use altogether. Many of the books that are in it now were in it then, and the same desk and chair stand there to this day. My father had just built on to his house the addition which gave him the library which I now use; his law books and papers, &c., required better accommodation; and, from that time, the closet became mine. He gave it to me, as I do to you, for a New Year's gift; and this is one reason why I love to give it to you for the same purpose. It is a very dear and sacred spot to me, Frank, this closet, and I think you will like to hear something of its history."
"Yes, indeed I shall, Mother," said Frank.
"When I first took possession of it," continued his mother, "I felt more grand, I fancy, than Queen Victoria did when she took possession of the throne of England, for she had anticipated her elevation, whereas I had never dreamed of mine. When I was a girl, children did not fare as they do now, and my father's liberality to me was an unusual thing. My father and mother both went up stairs with me on New Year's day, and led me into my little sanctum, which they had dressed with evergreens, and seated me in the three- cornered leather-bottomed chair, and told me that every thing in the closet was mine. Although it was winter, still the pine trees that you know come so near the window, and that now are old trees, looked beautiful, and to me it seemed a little paradise. 'Here,' said my mother, 'you were many a time shut up by me in order to make you a good girl. Now you are old enough to know yourself when it is the right time for you to be shut up here, in order that you may grow good. I advise you, at such times, to come here and stay till you have conquered the bad spirit, and can come out with a firm resolution to do better. I shall never put you in the closet again, but I shall trust, Alice, that you will put yourself in, at all proper times.' I well remember putting my arms around my mother's neck and kissing her for joy, but I said not a word. My heart was too full of love, and gratitude, and pleasure to speak. After my parents left me in the closet, in my own chair, now all my own, I sat still some minutes thinking what I should do with my great possession, how I should improve my great blessing. The thought of my mother's loving trust in me affected me very much. I resolved I would not disappoint her. I resolved that, whenever I found myself doing wrong, I would come to my closet, shut myself in, and pray there for strength to cure my faults. I then counted them all over as far as I knew them, and resolved to get rid of them all. I was too happy to