Harper's Novels Volume 7 (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. 1843 Excerpt: ... will not say heart. "And so then we have nothing bad to say of 'this here Petrea, 'as one of the friends of the house calls her. This Petrea has had all kind of botherations in the world: in the first place with her own nose, with which she could not get into conceit, and then with various other things, as well within her as without her, and for a long time it seemed as if her own world would never come forth out of chaos. "It has, however. With eyes full of grateful tears I will dare to say this, and some time I may perhaps more fully explain how this has been done. And blessed be the home which has turned back her wandering steps, has healed the wounds of her heart, and has offered her a peaceful haven, an affectionate defence, where she has time to rest after the storms, and to collect and to know herself. Without this home, without this influence, Petrea certainly might have become a witch, and not, as now, a tolerably reasonable person. "You know my present activity, which, while it conducts me deeper into life, discovers to me more beauty, more poetry than I had ever conceived of it in the dreams of my youth. Not merely from this cause, although greatly owing to it, a spring has begun to blossom for me on the other side of my thirty years, which, were it ever to wither, would be from my own fault. And if even still a painful tear may be shed over past errors or present faults; if the longing after what is yet unattainably better, purer, and brighter, may occasion many a pang, --what matters it" What matter if the eyewater burn, so that the eye only become clear 7 if heaven humiliate, so that it only draws us upwards 1 "One of Petrea's means of happiness is, to require very few of the temporal things of earth. She regards such ...