Lights and Shadows of a Pastor's Life (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1857 Excerpt: ... CHA1TER XXX. THE GOOD AND THE EVIL INTERTWINE. When the summer term commenced, Henrietta could not return, and Mr. James having but few scholars, thought that with Gertrude's assistance, he might attend to the recitations. Blanche Hayward still rendered assitance with music. The school had fallen away from eighty pupils, many of them large, talented young gentlemen and ladies, to thirty or forty, far younger and less advanced in studies. The long-continued indisposition of Castlereagh brought a blight upon his school that no energy or devotion in others could withstand or relieve. All saw it, all felt it; but there was no other way than to submit to the inevitable fate. Mr. James exerted himself faithfully to secure the remnant of the institution to Castlereagh as a means of solace in his afflictions, and endeavored to buoy him up with the hope of brighter scenes by and by. But the latter knew that he could do no more, and that the vitality of his proud "dream"-enterprise was irrecoverably gone. The organic remains were yet visible, but the sarcophagus was ordered, the sepulcher begun. See him. He lately dreamed such a glorious dream of life Now, having sought at every sacrifice to realize it, lo the result. He is emaciated, feeble, prematurely old, with awkward and unsteady movement, exciting pity; cadaverous, hollow-cheeked, hollow-eyed, and cane-supported. The boys and girls in their play move cautiously from his path, lest they should stir the breeze too rashly against him, and throw him down. He rests upon a staff, and repays them with a smile. He leans against the flagstaff, and anon climbs the fence, and sits upon it, eyeing the sportive groups around him, or gazing on the inaccessible mountains. By dreams decoyed, by dreams bespoiled, this, this ...