They
are small fruits whose ripening has outstripped their growth. Of
such there are some who, by the hot-house assiduities of their
friends, heating them with sulphurous stoves, and watering them with
subacid solutions, ripen into insufferable prigs. For them and for
their families it is well that Death the gardener should speedily
remove them into the open air. But there are others who, ripening
from natural, that is divine causes and influences, are the
daintiest little men and women, gentle in the utmost peevishness of
their lassitude, generous to share the gifts they most prize, and
divinely childlike in their repentances. Their falling from the
stalk is but the passing from the arms of their mothers into those
of--God knows whom--which is more than enough.
The chief part of little Molly's religious lessons, I do not mean
training, consisted in a prayer or two in rhyme, and a few verses of
the kind then in use among catholics. Here is a prayer which her
nurse taught her, as old, I take it, as Chaucer's time at least:--
Hail be thou, Mary, that high sittest in throne!
I beseech thee, sweet lady, grant me my boon--
Jesus to love and dread, and my life to amend soon,
And bring me to that bliss that never shall be done.
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