As little girls, as human flowers, they shone and passed out of sight.
Only of one do I think differently, the most exquisite among them, the
most beautiful in body and soul, or so I imagine, perhaps because of
the manner of her vanishing even while my eyes were still on her. That
was Dolly, aged eight, and because her little life finished then she is
the one that never faded, never changed.
Here are some lines I wrote when grief at her going was still fresh.
They were in a monthly magazine at that time years ago, and were set to
music, although not very successfully, and I wish it could be done
again.
Should'st thou come to me again
From the sunshine and the rain,
With thy laughter sweet and free,
O how should I welcome thee!
Like a streamlet dark and cold
Kindled into fiery gold
By a sunbeam swift that cleaves
Downward through the curtained leaves;
So this darkened life of mine
Lit with sudden joy would shine,
And to greet thee I should start
With a great cry in my heart.
Back to drop again, the cry
On my trembling lips would die:
Thou would'st pass to be again
With the sunshine and the rain.
XXII
A LITTLE GIRL LOST
Yet once more, O ye little girls, I come to bid you a last good-bye - a
very last one this time. Not to you, living little girls, seeing that I
must always keep a fair number of you on my visiting list, but to a
fascinating theme I had to write about. For I did really and truly
think I had quite finished with it, and now all at once I find myself
compelled by a will stronger than my own to make this one further
addition. The will of a little girl who is not present and is lost to
me - a wordless message from a distance, to tell me that she is not to
be left out of this gallery. And no sooner has her message come than I
find there are several good reasons why she should be included, the
first and obvious one being that she will be a valuable acquisition, an
ornament to the said gallery. And here I will give a second reason, a
very important one (to the psychological minded at all events), but not
the most important of all, for that must be left to the last.
In the foregoing impressions of little girls I have touched on the
question of the child's age when that "little agitation in the brain
called thought," begins. There were two remarkable cases given; one,
the child who climbed upon my knee to amaze and upset me by her
pessimistic remarks about life; the second, my little friend Nesta -
that was her name and she is still on my visiting list - who revealed
her callow mind striving to grasp an abstract idea - the idea of time
apart from some visible or tangible object.
