Search -
Aline, an old friend's story, by the author of 'The gambler's wife'.
Aline an old friend's story by the author of 'The gambler's wife' Author:Elizabeth Caroline Grey Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. " I went O'er the wide world, a lonely man to roam. I traversed many a land, through many years." Woourooffk. Few can leave t... more »heir country, for a lengthened stay in a foreign land, even though the human ties which bind them to its shores, be few, or broken, without a sick and sorrowful heart?a spirit, oppressed with dejection and mournful foreboding?for not only does the pure love of our country rise up within us, but the selfish considerations. Shall I ever return ? Shall Idie among strangers?be buried in a foreign land ?" fearfully assail the heart. The prophet's pathetic exclamation, " textit{Weep not for the dead, neither bemoan him, but weep for him that goeth away, for he shall return no more,nor see his native country,' seems to the morbid fancy, but too mournfully suited to our own immediate case. But often we live to find a return may be sadder still, than such a departure. To return, and as our1 feet touch once more our mother earth, and our ears again hear the sound of its mother tongue, to experience, perhaps, a keener sense of desolation, than when we landed on a foreign land?amongst a strange people, and heard a strange language?for who would not rather be unknown and unwelcomed abroad than at home? We may nave left behind us some, who once bore the name of friends, but where are they ?? All to seek, and we know not what changes, time and the sundry and mani- VOL. II. D fold chances of the world may have wrought even upon them. If ever found, scarcely can they be the same as when last we parted from them?nor can we hope to be to them, what once we might have been; and the first impulse of this state of feeling in a man advanced in years, I could well imagine to be the morbid idea that he has no more to do on earth?that h...« less