summer noons
Nor let us too harshly judge the mode of life , differ though it may from our own , which regards these superfluities as essential , and can hardly less dispense with them than with its daily bread . The violet , the anemone , the May-flower , a hundred sweet and hardy blossoms , thrive amid the chills and storms of early spring in the most exposed situations . But are not the exquisite tea-rose , the fragile garden-lily , or the cereus , that dies after one sweet night of perfumed beauty , as true to their nature and to God 's law ? Did not the same hand form the sparrow , who scatters the late snow from his wings , and gayly pecks the crumbs from our doorstep , and the humming-bird , who waits for gorgeous summer noons to come and sip the honey from our jessamine ? So let us , if we will , love Dora in the Spartan simplicity of her soldierly adornments , and none the less love and cherish the woman who now lies upon the very spot , where , but a year ago , lay little Sunshine , wavering between this life and a better . For some reason unknown to herself , Mrs. Legrange had , from the first , felt a strong affection for this chamber , haunted , though she knew it not , by the presence of the beloved child ; and she had taken much pleasure in its adornment ; though , now that all was done , she rarely noticed the beautiful articles collected about her , liking best of all to lie in dreamy revery , recalling , day after day , with the minute fondness of a woman 's memory , the looks , the gestures , the careless words , the pretty , graceful ways , the artless fascinations , of her whom now she rarely named , holding her memory as something too sacred for common speech , too far withdrawn into her own heart to be lightly brought to the surface . Thus lying in the twilight of this evening , dreamily watching the long white curtains as they filled with the night-air and floated out into the room like the shadowy sails of a bark anchored in some Dreamland bay , and never guessing whose eyes had watched their waving but one short year before , when ` Toinette was first laid in Dora 's little bed , Mrs. Legrange heard her husband coming up the stairs , and rose to receive him , with a strange fluttering at her heart , -- a sort of nervous hope and terror all in one , as if she had known him the bearer of great news , but could not yet determine its tenor .