Our life from babyhood is only one long lesson in
indebtedness; and we best learn what we have received by what we give.
This was dawning on my hero then. I recall how he ran the new passion.
That outburst you used to like, amid the green bloom of the prairies,
like the misted birches at home, under the heaven-wide warmth of April
breathing with universal mildness through the softened air--why, you can
remember the very day," I said. "It was one--" "Yes, I can remember more
than that," he interrupted; "I know the words, or some of them; what you
just said was the old voice--tang and colour--Poor Robin's voice;" and
he began, and I listened to the words, which had once been mine, and now
were his.
"By heaven, I never believed it. 'Clotho spins, Lachesis weaves, and
Atropos cuts,' I said, 'and the poor illusion vanishes; the loud
laughter, the fierce wailing, die on pale lips; the foolish and the
wise, the merciful and the pitiless, the workers in the vineyard and the
idlers in the market-place, are huddled into one grave, and the heart of
Mary Mother and of Mary Magdalen are one dust.
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