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BY MEAD AND STREAM
A STORY.
BY CHARLES GIBBON,
The sun still bright on the hilltop; figures rising to its crest, and there halting, with hands shading their eyes, to take a glad or sad look backward. Then, impelled by the master Time, they move downward through deepening shades to join the great crowd in the bosky glen at the foot of the mountain. Mingling in the crowd, they become themselves shadows, making strange shapes in the beautiful garden ground where they find rest.
But in that pause on the bright hilltop, in that look back along the slope which has been climbed, there falls a mist from the eyes. There is the straight easy road up to the height which we might have taken, and there are the devious paths like the mazy involutions of the lines on a railway map, which we have taken, and which have made the journey appear so wearisome to many, so short to the happy few.
But all see what a much pleasanter road they could travel if they might only start afresh with this new vision.
Old friends meet and exchange compliments about birthdays--some accepting them contentedly, others regarding them as grim jokes which would be honoured in the omission. But gay or sad, every one has in the heart a plaintive note which sounds that monosyllable 'IF!'
'If I had only been advised at the right moment, how different it would be with me now,' sighs the pallid invalid, closing his eyes in vain and trying to forget.
Then the sad-faced maiden:
'If he had only trusted me a little more--if I had only doubted him a little less, how sweet it would have been to have gone down this hillside hand in hand together.'
'If I could only have persuaded him not to make that last journey,' murmurs the widow.
'If my son had been spared,' moans the childless.
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