More
softly upon too crowded asylums for them: houses of noonday darkness
where eyes eagerly look out at the windows but do not see; houses of
soundlessness where ears listen and do not hear any noise; houses of
silence where lips try to speak but utter no word.
The snow of Christmas Eve was falling softly on the old: whose eyes
are always seeing vanished faces, whose ears hear voices gentler than
any the earth now knows, whose hands forever try to reach other hands
vainly held out to them. Sad, sad to those who remember loved ones
gone with their kindnesses the snow of Christmas Eve!
But sadder yet for those who live on together after kindnesses have
ceased, or whose love went like a summer wind. Sad is Christmas Eve to
them! Dark its snow and blinding!
* * * * *
It was late that night.
She came into the parlor, clasping the bowl of a shaded lamp--the only
light in the room. Her face, always calm in life's wisdom, but
agitated now by the tide of deep things coming swiftly in toward her,
rested clear-cut upon the darkness.
She placed the lamp on a table near the door and seated herself beside
it. But she pushed the lamp away unconsciously as though the light of
the house were no longer her light; and she sat in the chair as though
it were no longer her chair; and she looked about the room as though
it were no longer hers nor the house itself nor anything else that she
cared for most.
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