Chapter II: Prologue

The lamp has gone out in the old familiar room! It used to shine, late at night upon the books, upon the pictures on the wall, and upon my face as I sat writing there! Oftentimes it shone upon another face which looked over my shoulder, and cheered me in my labor. But now the lamp has gone out--and forever. The face which looked upon me is gone; the coffin lid shut down upon it one Summer day! The room is dark forever. And the next room, where she used to sleep with her children--it is dark and still! The house is desolate! There are no voices to break its stillness! Her voice, and the voices of our children, are silent forever on this lower earth. My heart goes back to that house and to its rooms, and to the voices that once sounded there, and the faces which once made it glad, and with more than the bitterness of Death I confess, _that Time can never return_. Nevermore, nevermore, nevermore! Wealth may come; change of scene may deaden sorrow; wrestling with the world, may divert the soul from perpetual brooding, but the Truth is still the Truth, _that Time can never return_. And this is the end of all, after a life spent in perpetual battle--after toiling day and night for long years--after looking to the Future, hoping, struggling, suffering--to find at last, even before thirty years are mine, that the lamp has gone out, and forever! That those for whom I toiled and suffered--whose well-being was the impulse and the ultimate of all my exertions--are no longer with me, but gone to return never--nevermore. Upon this earth the lamp that lit my way through life, has indeed gone out, and forever. But is it not lighted now by a higher hand than mortal, and is it not shining now in a better world than this?

* * * * *

Once more I resume my pen. Since this work was commenced, Death has been busy with my home--death hath indeed laid my home desolate. It is a selfish thing to write for money, it is a base and a mean thing to write for fame, but it is a good and a holy thing to write for the approval of those whom we most intensely love. Deprived of this spring of action, it is hard, very hard to take up the pen once more. Write, write! but the face that once looked over your shoulder, and cheered you in your task, shall look over it no more. Write, write! and turn your gaze to every point of the horizon of life--not one face of home meets your eye.

* * * * *

Take up the pen once more. Banish the fast gathering memories--choke them down. Forget the ACTUAL of your own life, in the ideal to which the pen gives utterance. Brave old pen! Always trusted, never faithless! True through long years of toil, be true and steadfast now; when the face that once watched your progress is sleeping in graveyard dust. And when you write down a noble thought, or give utterance to a holy truth, may be, that face will smile upon your progress, even through the darkened glass which separates the present from the Better World.

PART FIRST.

"FRANK VAN HUYDEN."

DEC. 23, 1844.--EVENING.