If there was ruin without, there was
desolation added to ruin within, but neither ruin nor desolation
could entirely obliterate the forms so well remembered. I passed
from room to room, now pausing to recall an incident, and now
hurrying on under a sense of pain at seeing a place, hallowed in my
thoughts by the tenderest associations of my life, thus abandoned to
the gnawing tooth of decay, and destined to certain and speedy
destruction. When I came to my mother's room, emotion grew too
powerful, and a gush of tears relieved the oppressive weight that
lay upon my bosom. There I lingered long, with a kind of mournful
pleasure in this scene of my days of innocence, and lived over years
of the bygone times.
At last I turned with sad feelings from a spot which memory had held
sacred for twenty years; but which, in its change, could be sacred
no longer. Material things are called substantial; but it is not so.
Change and decay are ever at work upon them; they are unsubstantial.
A real substance is the mind, with its thoughts and affections.
Forms built there do not decay. How perfectly had I retained in
memory the home of my childhood! Not a leaf had withered, not a
flower had faded; nothing had fallen under the scythe of time.
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