Who can weigh circumstances,
passions, temptations, that go to our good and evil account, save One,
before whose awful wisdom we kneel, and at whose mercy we ask
absolution? Here it ends," thought Pen; "this day or to-morrow will
wind up the account of my youth; a weary retrospect, alas! a sad
history, with many a page I would fain not look back on! But who has
not been tired or fallen, and who has escaped without scars from that
struggle?" And his head fell on his breast, and the young man's heart
prostrated itself humbly and sadly before that Throne where sits
wisdom, and love, and pity for all, and made its confession. "What
matters about fame or poverty!" he thought. "If I marry this woman I
have chosen, may I have strength and will to be true to her, and to
make her happy. If I have children, pray God teach me to speak and to
do the truth among them, and to leave them an honest name. There are
no splendors for my marriage. Does my life deserve any? I begin a new
phase of it; a better than the last may it be, I pray Heaven!"
The train stopped at Tunbridge as Pen was making these reflections;
and he handed over the newspaper to his neighbor, of whom he
took leave, while the foreign clergyman in the opposite corner still
sate with his eyes on his book.
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